


Different

by PompousPickle



Category: Almost Human
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Case Fic, Dorian thinks he and John are dating whups, Emotionally Challenged Boyfriends, M/M, Plot-centric, Slow Burn, probably idk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-23
Updated: 2014-01-17
Packaged: 2018-01-02 11:04:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 23,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1056020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PompousPickle/pseuds/PompousPickle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You’re different because you’re mine." </p><p>In which the gang finds another DRN as a suspect for murder, John is an idiot, Dorian gets memory defects, and no one is very good at emotions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Shout out to Ton who puts up with my ramblings about Almost Human and makes comments that inspire things like this. Despite not watching the show.

They found another DRN at a crime scene. Collapsed. Blinking slowly. Knife in hand. The victim’s DNA was everywhere. It was all over the ground. All over the knife. All over the synthetic’s body. There was blood everywhere. It wasn’t a quick job or a job with a purpose. It was a crime of passion.

“He didn’t do it,” Dorian said uselessly as the other officers grabbed the synthetic to take him in for questioning.

Kennex’s lips were tight as he watched the MXs shove the man into a police vehicle. He was murmuring and shaking his head, his processes still trying to comprehend the situation. “Yeah,” he finally agreed. “I know he didn’t.” But his partner could see it on John’s face. As clear as day. The detective doubted it.  

In any other circumstance, on any other day, Dorian would have said something. He would have called him out. Made him argue. Made him question. But instead, they both just watched the other DRN, the man with Dorian’s eyes, be driven away towards headquarters. Neither of them wanted to think about it. Neither of them even looked at each other.  

“Come on,” John finally said, breaking the palpable silence between them. “We have a synthetic to question.”

\---

They tried to make the DRNs all look different, to keep the same sort of variety you find in humans.

“My name is Darren,” the synthetic muttered, his voice soft, head hung low like a toddler who knew he was in trouble. He had blonde curls, a delicate face, light skin. They worked so hard to make ever DRN completely and totally unique.

But the eyes were always the same.

“Who made you?” John asked, ignoring everything the synthetic had to say about his personal identity. “I mean uh, where were you _born_?” He glanced at Dorian, who only gave him a slight grimace from the corner of the room.

“Pardon?”

John pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes, trying to think of the right words to say. At this point, he knew it would be easier just have his partner do the talking. But it was also a matter of pride to do this right. For once.

“Do you know this man?” He finally asked, showing him a picture of the victim. An older gentleman wrapped in a parka, with a kind smile on his face.

Darren winced, as though he had seen something painful, murmuring as though the words were caught in his throat. “His name is Aaron Saunterfield. He was sleeping with my wife. But…is…is he okay? Is he in trouble?”

John could hardly contain the frustrated groan that escaped him.

\----

“You think you’d be better at talking to DRNs by now,” Dorian said as they left the interrogation room, after getting a whole lot of nothing.

“Yeah? Why’s that?”

They both sort of just stopped in their tracks. John grinned cheekily, trying to wring some kind of laugh or smile or _something_ out of his partner. Dorian only looked at him for a long time. “Really John?”

“First off, you’re not a suspect for murder. Besides, you’re different.” Kennex decided to leave it at that, sliding into his seat to look over the case file again.

“Darren and I are of the same make and model. Hell, we’re about as close to brothers as anyone can-”

“Brothers. Not clones. You’re _different_.” His voice was stiff this time, pulling up the file to a large screen and moving around case data as need-be. “You’re a bleeding heart. But you’d fight like hell to prove your innocence. All Darren had to say was that he was married, that Saunterfield was sleeping with his wife, and that he didn’t kill the man.”

They both knew what everyone was thinking. An escaped DRN getting married and discovering that a man was sleeping with his wife. He snapped. He murdered. It made too much sense. DRNs were obsolete for this reason. The case was almost too clean to let go.

“He doesn’t remember killing him,” Dorian added, as though that were helpful.

“We can’t be sure of that. No pulse? No tells? Synthetics make good liars.” Kennex said nonchalantly before glancing at his partner, who wasn’t taking it nearly as well as he hoped. “Don’t take that the wrong way. You’re…”

“Different? Yeah. I got that.” Dorian shook his head, trying to get the thought of his head, trying to replace his frustration with Kennex with the case. It was proving difficult. “So what, you want me to go into his memory and double check everything? See if we can’t ID the killer?”

“I’m beginning to wonder why we didn’t do that in the first place. We’ll get him down to Rudy’s. In the meantime, I’ll have Stahl run some files on this so-called wife of his and see what we can’t get.”

“So-called? So now you’re doubting that he was married? That he had a life?” Dorian could hardly hold in his frustration at this point.

“I didn’t _say_ that. Before you, all DRNs had been decommissioned for being…”

“Crazy? Unstable?” Dorian was standing now, glaring down on the detective.

“And a fine job you are doing proving us otherwise.”

“I’ve proven myself in times of high stress situations and I think we all know that DRNs are perfectly capable of self-control as much as they are…”

“ _You’re different_ Dorian.” John finally grunted out again. The whole office was staring at this point. It was all he could do to make sure things didn’t get out of hand.

“ _Why?_ What makes me different, John? What makes me better than the man downstairs? More trustworthy? What keeps you from shutting down everything I say?”

“You’re different because you’re _mine,”_ he finally shouted out, realizing exactly what he had said only after having said it. Dorian simply stared back, eyes wide and as calculating as always. But they were stricken with emotion. Emotion that John _really_ didn’t want to deal with. “M…my partner. You’re my partner and that demands some kind of trust.” Now he was _certain_ that everyone was staring at them. “Go talk to Rudy about getting Darren’s memories. I’m going to run some research and I’ll be right down.”

John never did research. That was Dorian’s job. Or Stahl’s job. Or anyone’s job except Kennex’s honestly. But for the second time that day, Dorian didn’t fight him. He couldn’t bring himself to say anything at all. Because the only words on his mind were “because you’re mine”.  And he really didn’t want to think about what that meant.  


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Plot happens.

“Big fight?” Valerie Stahl slid down next to Kennex, handing him Saunterfield’s electronic file.

John merely grunted. “You heard?”

“I saw,” she said with a small smile, comforting and sympathetic. Kennex had the strong urge to grab her hand, to make that smile just for him. He couldn’t deny that he was attracted to the woman. And yet… “Everyone saw,” she finished. “You two will patch things up.”

“We always do,” he then murmured to himself, his brain still buzzing. He knew the fight was nothing. He knew the two of them could easily ignore it and move on with their lives. But it wasn’t in Dorian’s nature to ignore things. He took in John’s words like a sponge, and let them shape him and change him.

_You’re different because you’re mine._

John didn’t even know what he meant by that himself. He didn’t want Dorian to ask about it. Didn’t know how he would even respond.

“What do we know about Saunterfield?” John finally asked, snapping back after an uncomfortable silence between the two.

“Right!” Valerie seemed to shake herself back to reality as well, opening up the file and moving the holograms onto John’s screen. “Aaron Saunterfield worked at a small genetics lab on the south side of the city. Well, until recently.”

“Well, obviously.”

“I meant before he died. He was fired three days before the murder. His boss, Paul Tanner, didn’t state why in the paperwork resignation.” She said, pulling up the forms detailing Saunterfield’s release from the company.

“Isn’t that against some kind of law? Firing without stating reasoning?” John muttered, more to himself than to the other Detective.

“I didn’t know you were such a stickler for the rules, Detective,” she replied with a laugh. She closed the file almost immediately after, to look John in the eye. “Be honest with me John. What’s your theory on all this?”

“Funny, I was going to ask you the same question. Is that your job? Analyzing human behavior?”

Valerie only sighed. “DRNs _are_ known for having a full capacity of human emotions. And considering that the scorned lover is one of the highest motivations for a murder…”

“You think he did it.”

“And you?” She shrugged nonchalantly. She didn’t want to believe Darren did it. She didn’t want Dorian to have to face consequences if Darren had. But she had to be open to all possibilities.

“I think DRNs are out of commission and I don’t know how one lived his life long enough to get married and then killed the man sleeping with his wife. They’re more human than most models. But not so human that they can get away passing off as one for years, right? Unless…” John stared at the ceiling for a moment before something crossed his mind suddenly, pushing back his seat and standing up.

Valerie stood with him, following his concern with confused eyes. “Detective are you…?”

“Shit. Dorian can't upload those memories. I have to get to Rudy’s.”

\---

By the time he reached Rudy however, it was too late. Dorian was laying on the table, sparks running wild from the plug. Without even asking questions, John dashed forward, pulling the cord out form Dorian’s ear, sending sparks and electricity into his hand, completely numbing all of his fingers. The sensation ran up his arms, numbing the nerves briefly before they started humming with electricity.

He dropped the cord and looked over at a stunned and shaking Rudy. “You could have died from the voltage,” the scientist said, his voice barely a whisper, still trying to comprehend all that had happened in the last few minutes.

“And I didn’t. I noticed.” John gripped his right arm with his other hand, still trying to calm down the ringing sensation in his veins. “What the hell happened here?” He then rasped out with a firm breath, nodding towards the two unconscious DRNs on the table.

Rudy was on the verge of hysteria. Air had still not appeared to have “The DR…Dorian. Wanted access to Darren’s memory files of the murder. We only went through the last three days of memory but... Darren’s whole life…every memory. Every emotion. Completely uploaded into Dorian’s hardware. It must have been programmed into him in those three days. God knows if I can even get the overloaded synthetic running again let alone…”

“Get him running,” John nearly growled out. He wasn’t throwing Rudy against a wall though. Even if he desperately wanted to. He felt he had grown in that respect. The damage was basically what he had expected. Someone set Darren up to kill Saunterfield. Uploaded memories. Programmed emotions. “Get him running _immediately_. We have a murder to solve.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> John has this magical power where he realizes things too late. I swear to god it happens all the time. 
> 
> Feel free to comment/leave criticism. Or message me on tumblr (thepompouspickle). I love making new friends with the same fandoms as me! <3


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Plot Thickens (TM) and gay begins to happen. More than it already was happening, I guess.

John sat in the room while Rudy worked on getting Dorian back online. The most he could do right now was go over the files again. “Is it even possible to write that much code in a day? How long doesit take to program memories and emotions like that?” He glanced up at Rudy for only a second, watching as he plugged away at Dorian’s brain, picking and pulling desperately. “Hey Einstein,” he stated, a little louder, not quite on the verge of shouting. “I said I was wondering how…”

“I’m sorry,” Rudy turned off his tools for only a second, barely lifting his goggles to look at the man. “I thought you wanted your partner back as soon as possible, Detective.” Before he even gave Kennex a moment to respond, he returned to his work, muttering to himself. “I swear. Sometimes I wonder how different from the MXs you really are.”

“This is for the case,” John replied, as though it changed anything. “I need to know how someone can program a DRN that quickly. Don’t these things learn off of experiences and interactions or something?” He could have sworn Dorian had lectured him about that at some point. Too bad he usually chose to stop listening.

“Yes, but it possible to…trick the synthetic into thinking they already possess these things.” Rudy’s words were slow and calculated, as though he thought he were speaking to an idiot. John ignored it in favor of getting more information. “Of course, it takes away a level of their self-awareness. Which, as you probably know, DRNs are quite well known for.”

Kennex only made a face in agreement. Dorian seemed to know all too well that he was a synthetic, whether he liked it or not. He was constantly reminding John about it. Reminding himself about it. And John would never admit how it crazy it drove him.

He pulled up the recorded file of Darren’s interrogation. In time, Rudy would have to get the suspect back and running too.  And he knew this. But right now the only thing that mattered was…

No. He wasn’t going to let himself do that. He wasn’t that pathetic.

He played the file.

_“And how long have you and your wife been uh…married?”_

_“Six years. Six and a half, actually. Our anniversary was…”_

_“I don’t care. When did you find out that Saunterfield was sleeping with her?”_

_“Can we not…mention that?”_

And the interrogation went on. John insisted they talk about it. He slammed his hands on the tabled and shouted and insisted. It only led to Darren blubbering, insisting that he had not killed Saunterfield over and over and over again. John sighed and shut the file again.

“How long until you can get Tall Dark and Annoying running again?”

“Will you please stop asking questions for five minutes? I appreciate that you are concerned. To be honest I wish you were half this concerned while out on the field.” Rudy shook his head with a small sigh.

“I’m concerned. I’m _very_ concerned. I’m a good partner.” John argued, furrowing his brow. He was only grateful Dorian wasn’t around to give some sort of retort.

“Is that why you tried to use me as a bullet sponge last week?” A weak voice sputtered out. John nearly dropped his digital file book; he turned to look at the DRN so quickly. Dorian rolled over slightly on the work table, blinking himself back to full-functionality.  

John squinted at him for only a moment, his brain trying to catch up to what was happening. “It was a joke. Mostly. Rudy would of fix’d ya.”

John hadn’t realized how worried he had been until Dorian flashed that tiny smirk.

Christ. He was in trouble.

“Sure. Whatever helps you sleep at night.” Dorian shrugged as he began to get off of the table, only for Rudy to slam him back down. For a wiry man, he knew how to pack a punch.

“You aren’t clear for the field just yet. In fact you shouldn’t even be _on_ right now I haven’t…”

“I’m fine,” Dorian insisted, his face lighting up. John simply assumed the man was running a diagnostic of himself.  “You forgot to flip me into sleep mode when I was overloaded. Which, by the way, you should watch that. Working on live machinery can lead to some serious electrical damage.”

“ _Thank you,_ Dorian, but that doesn’t make you any less vul-”

Dorian place his hand on the scientist’s shoulder and gave a smile, that same little smile he gave to everyone he met. “Thanks,” he said quietly. “I feel great. Better than usual, actually. Likely due a much needed break from my difficult and emotionally inept partner.”  

“I’m standing right here thanks,” John muttered. “Rudy, can you still get Darren up and running? I have more questions and I distinctly remember you saying you didn’t want to answer any more.”

Rudy just glanced between the two partners and finally ended back at John. “Yes…I…of course. Please let me know if there are any bugs to be concerned about. You had a lot of data in your brain. So you need to alert me of any residue.” He then turned directly John. “No bubblegum. No duct tape. And for _God’s sake_ no more paperclips.”

“Hey, _some_ people on the force appreciate my resourcefulness,” John retorted quickly as Dorian stood up and brushed the dust of the workshop from his clothes.

“We’ll take care of this, Rudy. John and I have been doing this for ages,” Dorian said, turning to John with a small smile.

But it wasn’t his normal smile. Not the smile he always gave, that little broken smirk. This was different. A smile meant just for John, with a spark in his eye that Kennex had never seen before.

John shut his eyes tightly and shook his head. He was overthinking things. Imagining things. He just needed sleep. Or a drink. Or something. Because when he opened his eyes, that smile was completely gone.

“Ages? You need to recalibrate your calculator,” the detective said stiffly. It had only been a few months. But John couldn’t lie; it felt like longer. “Come on. We’ve only gotten more questions than answers.”

Dorian nodded and began to follow John as they left the workshop, adjusting his coat as he walked. “Where to first?”

\---

“Where to first” was Saunterfield’s office. Sometimes technology could only get you so far. And when Darren’s memories weren’t reliable, they had to do police work the old fashioned way: questioning and digging up leads. John couldn’t say he wasn’t pleased about this. It reminded him of the old days. Of his old partner. Of times where things were just a little bit less fucked up.

And then all he had to do was look at Dorian’s eyes and he was right back to remembering how screwed he really was.

“Darren did kill Saunterfield.” Dorian finally broke the silence, as he seemed so very fond of doing.

“You see that in his memories?”

“Felt it, more like. It was vague. He tried to...he tried to delete it, after it happened.” Dorian blinked a few times, trying to process it all. “I didn’t like it. Having him inside my head.”

“No I can’t imagine you did.” John stiffened up again, not wanting these discussions about _feelings_ and _memories_. If he let it continue, it was only a matter of time before Dorian was asking about his own memories. And he really didn’t want to go there. “Look, Darren might of killed him but he was set up. Someone programmed those memories. Wound him up like a time bomb. Gave him feelings that would make him snap. So don’t…don’t feel bad or whatever okay?”

Dorian was quiet for a while. Longer than John was accustomed to anyway. Finally, he turned some music on, and immediately looked at John. “You were worried about me in there.”

“It wasn’t enough that you wanted to talk about your feelings. Now you want to talk about _mine_? What the hell did Rudy do to you?” John decided the only winning move was to avoid the conversation altogether.

Dorian only smiled again. _That_ smile. That smile that was full and whole and _far_ too human to bear.

And just like before, it was gone before he could even blink, even breathe.

John pulled in front of the office: a genetics lab known for researching cells of the human brain. If they could find any leads as to who would want Saunterfield dead that badly, it would be there. He looked down for a second to put the car into park, only to notice a hand reaching in front of the gearshift. Specifically, Dorian’s hand. On his thigh.

Dorian’s hand was on his thigh and he couldn’t even feel it thanks to his stupid prosthetic limb. And he didn’t want to think about how much he would have preferred to feel it. He stared at it like it were a foreign object, completely unconnected to the man next to him. Slowly putting the car into park, he looked up at Dorian, who followed his gaze down.

As soon as the DRN looked at his hand, he jerked back, gripping his hand backwards. He stared at John for only a moment before he winced, as though he were in pain. “I’m sorry man. I have no idea why I…”

John slid out of the car and closed the door. “We’ll talk about it later.” Though they both knew John was lying. He wouldn’t bring it up even if he were at gunpoint.

What the _hell_ was happening to his partner?  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, feel free to comment or say hi (here or on [tumblr](thepompouspickle.tumblr.com))! I love having Almost Human friends.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John figures out what is going on.

_Future Mind Technologies_ was a small and local lab, designed towards genetics of the mind and increasing mental productivity. Looking forward to a smarter tomorrow.

Or at least, that’s what the damn brochure said when the two detectives entered the place.

In truth, the lab was huge. It was sterile and white, with gaudy statues and paintings that made it look more like a hospital than a place of science. When John had asked the receptionist about Aaron Saunterfield, she only handed them a brochure and told them to take a seat, while she fetched someone to “answer their inquiries”.

There were some parts of old-fashioned detective work that Kennex really despised.

“This place isn’t exactly as cozy as the brochure describes it,” Dorian notes, more to himself than to anyone, flipping through the brochure, scanning it quickly before putting it down.

Well, John was glad someone was reading it. Because he sure as hell didn’t care. His leg bounced anxiously as they waited. He noticed Dorian’s hand shift next to him and quickly stilled his movement, afraid he might put his hand back on his thigh. It was a small thing. If Dorian noticed, he didn’t say anything.

“So what does this place do exactly? Research brain functions? Changing around brain cells?” Kennex stared up at the ceiling, counting tiles in his mind. He had heard about “enhancement” centers. It was hard not to know about them. People were figuring out how to rig the gene lottery. How to make it so they were prettier, smarter, and stronger. And all it took was a whole lot of money and patience.

“Specifically the lab seems to enhance the brain functions of a child still in the womb,” Dorian said after his face light up briefly. John couldn’t help but pull a face. Even after looking through the pamphlet, he still had to Power Google the answer. “Too bad your parents never came here, huh?”

Before John could say something snarky in response, a white-haired man stood before the two men in the lobby. He wore a gray suit and a smarmy grin, holding out his hand for a handshake. “Doctor Dave Davidson. President of _Future Mind Technologies._ What can I do for you finegentlemen today?”

John and Dorian exchanged a quick look before Kennex quickly proceeded to whip out his badge. “Doctor Davidson. Detective John Kennex. This is my partner. We would like to ask you a few questions about your former employee, Aaron Saunterfield.”

The smile dropped like a brick. And suddenly the man in front of them took back his hand and closed his eyes for a moment. “Yes. Could you come with me?”

\---

Inside Davidson’s office, the President looked at the two detectives and pulled out a series of hardware disks. “What has Saunterfield done?” He finally asked calmly. Though even John could tell that Davidson was internally panicking, compiling a list of excuses for whatever trouble Saunterfield had gotten into.

“Why? Was he involved in something we should know about?” Dorian asked quickly, taking a look at the disks before scanning over them.

“I’m not entirely sure. I fired him before I could find out, to be honest.” The man took a seat behind his desk. “Was…” he then repeated slowly. “You mean he’s…”

“Found dead yesterday,” John finally said, his patience running thin. “Killed by a DRN, going by the name of Darren.” John flashed a picture of him to the President. “Know anything of him?”

“I…no. Sorry. But if you know who killed him, then why are you still asking around?”

“That’s classified information,” Kennex responded stiffly, straightening his shoulders and putting his data pad away. “Why did you fire Saunterfield? And only a few days before his murder. You have to admit, it looks suspicious.”

Finally, the man seemed to falter, seemed to let some emotion slip from his tired façade of calmness. “I understand that,” he said, gritting his teeth together, “But I promise you that I didn’t know he was going to be killed. I fired him because I _needed_ to. Go ahead, Robot. Tell him what’s on those disks.”

Both John and Dorian flinched when he addressed the DRN as such. But Dorian still spoke, his eyes steely and his face expressionless. “Video coverage of the lab. Aaron Saunterfield was stealing data and technology out of the lab. He was meeting with a woman. They seemed to be…involved.”

John paused for a moment before nearly whispering to his partner. “A woman. Darren’s wife?”

“It could be,” Dorian muttered under his breath. Davidson only glanced between the two as they exchanged words. “You fired him for stealing from the company?”

Davidson sighed, finally nodding. “The woman. She seemed to know what she was doing with the technologies he took. We have reason to believe she was with another company. We couldn’t allow _Future Minds_ to be connected to any other business. Especially if they had…less than savory plans for our data.”

John blinked several times. The only times people were this cooperative with police officers is if they really didn’t have anything to hide. Davidson probably wasn’t guilty of anything so much as jaywalking. He only grunted. “We’ll need to take these tapes under police custody. Evidence and all that,” he said tersely, not giving the man another word as he stuffed them into a bag. Dorian was already working on flagging them as evidence in the police files, he could tell with just one glance. “Keep us posted. I’m sure the precinct will be coming in here soon to poke around. Don’t do anything stupid in the meantime.”

“Thank you,” Dorian piped in quickly. “That’s his way of saying thank you.”

“Yeah what he said.”

\---

They were in the car for only a few minutes before Dorian chose to break the silence between them. “That went well.” He said awkwardly as John drove back to Dorian’s apartment. The place wasn’t much to look at. It was provided by the Precinct and covered in posters of old musicians that Dorian liked to listen to on boring days on patrol. But Dorian called it home and that’s what mattered.

“Yeah. Too well. Any idea who the woman in the video was?”

Dorian only shook his head slightly and shrugged. “It was a bit blurry to run a facial recognition scan on the spot. I’ll run a full scan once we get back to our apartment. That is if you can wait that long.”

John nearly hit the brakes on the spot. “O…our… _pardon?_ ”

“Broad Street Apartments? Apartment 642? Isn’t that where we live?” Dorian asked, his face barely revealing any emotion. John wasn’t sure if this was some kind of joke. “Which, by the way, you are going a longer way than you need to. You could have turned right at the last light.”

That was his address. That was exactly his address and Dorian thought he _lived_ with him and had his hand on his leg earlier. And John’s head couldn’t stop spinning. “Dorian we don’t live together. You have your…place. You know? The tiny hole in the wall where you recharge your ‘Annoy John’ function every ni…” he started to say, before he looked over and noticed Dorian frowning in concentration, his face flickering blue on and off. “Dorian?”

John pulled over to the nearest curb, no questions asked. “Dorian are you…?”

“We…erwer and myj plaadddd-de-de” Dorian began to stutter before a crumble of white noise fell from his lips. He pressed his hands to his temple as the blue lights began to flicker faster and faster, his entire face lit up. “I…coulll-could ddddhave dsssworn….could have swo-sworn.”

John suddenly felt like his brain was short circuiting too. Jesus Christ what was _happening_ right now?

“Dorian,” John stated slowly. But when his partner wouldn’t respond, he took the DRN’s chin and turned his head towards him. “Dorian _think_. Think and answer me. How long have we been working together? How long has it been?”

That seemed to slow the lights down, at least for a time. Dorian’s brain seemed to come back online a little bit more. He blinked twice before shaking his head and answering. “Ssss…six. Six and a half years. No one else could put up with you, I guess.”

_“And how long have you and your wife been uh…married?”_

_“Six years. Six and a half, actually. Our anniversary was…”_

John grunted to himself. “Fucking great.” He put the car back into gear immediately. “Come on. We’re going home. I guess.”  

\---

Dorian had never seen John’s apartment before. But he walked around the place like he had been there his whole life. He was mapping out with his eyes, memorizing every bit of it. But at the same time, he melted into the place like he belonged there. Like he loved it there. Like he loved-

No.

John wasn’t going to go there.

“Okay,” John sucked in a breath. “Dare I ask where you generally…I mean, do you even sleep?” John danced around his words carefully. He needed Dorian out of his hair so he could talk to Rudy. But he also didn’t want to cause him to go into Beatbox Mode again.  

Dorian looked at John for a long time, his eyes searching. “There’s something wrong with my software, isn’t there?” He faltered for a moment, his face lighting up again.

“Yeah. If you thinking that we…” John gestured vaguely between the two of them, “is a software error? Then yeah, something’s wrong.”

Dorian opened his mouth to say something. But John only knew that he would just end up getting into a conversation he didn’t want to have. He would only end up digging his own grave. “You know what? Take the couch tonight. Run those security tapes and see if we can’t dig up information on the woman Saunterfield was mingling with. I need to…”

“I get it John. It’s okay,” Dorian said with what was meant to be a reassuring smile. “I’ll see you in the morning.” But his smile dropped too early. And John felt far from okay about everything happening. He couldn’t shake how sick to his stomach he felt about the whole thing.

\---

“Rudy. For _god’s sake_ Rudy wake up.” John whispered harshly into his phone, trying not to let Dorian hear too much of his conversation. He probably could hear it all anyway. “Rudy I know you can hear me. Dorian’s memory is…screwy. He seems to think we’ve been together for six years. And he…”

“This is why you should listen to me,” a faint voice replied on the other end, before Rudy’s face appeared on-screen. He was sleep-deprived, with bags under his eyes and a disembodied arm in his hands, still squirming around uselessly. His hair was disheveled and his voice was broken. “I told you he wasn’t fit for being on the field.”

“Yeah I get that now. How do I _fix_ him?” John was pacing his bedroom now. “No offense but he seems to think he lives in my house and I have certain issues about a man who makes me eat live slugs living with me.”

“Well, it is natural for an overload of data to cause some natural bleed through of memories and emotions,” Rudy said, more to himself than anything as he continued to play with the MX arm he was programming. “Dorian’s programming should begin to adapt those emotions into his own life, and then sort them out from reality naturally.”

“Adapt? Like what?”

“Like…Darren, the other DRN. He had a wife, correct? Perhaps there is another woman in Dorian’s own life that he has an emotional attachment towards. He should project those feelings onto the woman before they sort themselves on their own. Or he will remember winning a soccer trophy in fourth grade. Or other things that never happened. One has to be careful not to overload the system again by correcting him but…”

“No.” John squeezed the bridge of his nose hard enough to leave a bruise. “No no no. No. We have to sort out his memories faster. We can’t have him…” he paused for a moment before clearing his throat. “We can’t have him having some sort of overload on the job. He did it once. I thought he was going completely offline.”

Finally, Rudy put the arm down and looked at John with a sigh. “I can try. But there is a chance that would override his memory entirely. And even then it would take a week at the least. On top of all the bloody work I have to do on these idiots,” he said, motioning in the general direction of the MXs hanging around the workshop. “I can do my best but I’m already losing sleep as it is and…”

“No. It’s...it’s alright. We’re going to be fine. You said he’ll sort it out. We’ll get it fixed when we get the chance.” John said, wondering if putting Dorian under for a week would force him to take an MX partner. He glanced through the door of his bedroom to look at Dorian, standing over his kitchen table and looking over the security videos. The DRN looked through the projections and noticed John peering through the door, flashing that stupid smile of his.

“Yeah. Rudy, focus on getting Darren back online and doing…whatever it is you do. I’ll see you later.”

“Get some sleep for once Jo-” was all he heard before Kennex hung up. He looked at Dorian for only another moment before the DRN went back to looking at the surveillance tapes. John simply shut his door and went to sleep. 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Boyfriends, breakfast, and other things.

Kennex woke up at six o’clock in the morning to the sound of music playing in the distance. Likely his alarm. He rolled over and slammed the top of the clock twice, trying to blink himself awake slowly.

It took him two whole minutes to realize that he had gone to bed with his synthetic limb on, and now it was very much missing. It took him another moment to register that the music hadn’t been coming from the radio on his alarm clock.

“What in god’s name…” he muttered to himself, slurring his words with exhaustion. Before his brain could even really wake up, his bedroom door opened, flooding the room with light. The music became louder as well. Dorian stepped into his bedroom, holding John’s synthetic leg.

Kennex nearly jumped backwards from the sight. Right. Dorian. Memory glitch. John nearly moaned as he remembered, wanting even more to just go back to sleep and erase everything that had happened.

“You really shouldn’t go to sleep with your leg on,” Dorian simply said as he tossed the leg onto the bed. “Thing needs to charge, John. Or else it will lock up and get us all killed. You’re just lucky I’m around to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

John rolled over to grab his leg and shuffled to get it on, suddenly aware that he had gone to sleep wearing significantly more clothes than what he was in now. His shirt had become unbuttoned, his shoulder holsters torn off, and his pants were hanging neatly on the end of his bed, leaving him in his boxers.  

John snapped the leg into place, taking in a deep breath. He couldn’t freak out about this. He knew he shouldn’t. He would have plenty of time to freak out about it _after_ Dorian was fixed. Still, he couldn’t help but look at the man. “And you couldn’t have just woken me up? You had to go and undress me in the middle of the night?”

Dorian barely moved from his position in the doorway. It was hard to tell in the glare of the morning sunlight, but John could swear the little bastard was smirking. “Nothing I haven’t done before,” he said, altogether too calmly, as though his sensors weren’t picking up on John’s heart beating like a madman.

And John just wanted to scream. Wanted to tell him that it _was_ something he hadn’t done before. That it was new and uncomfortable and altogether too close to what he wanted. He didn’t even want to think about how true that last one felt. That he might be a little but bisexual or a little bit attracted to robots or a little bit of both. It was honestly too much to deal with at six in the morning. He really just wanted to go back to bed.

“Get up. Your breakfast is getting cold. Hope you like your bacon extra crispy.”

\---

The bacon wasn’t crispy. It was burnt. “You have to have like, 18 million cookbooks downloaded in there and none of them can tell you the proper cooking time for bacon?” John played with his food, trying not to think about all of this. About how Dorian was suddenly acting like they had been married for years. About how he was cooking breakfast for him and undressing him while he was asleep. How much he missed having someone who cared.

“Oh like you have any room to complain about _my_ cooking skills.” Dorian replied from John’s work desk, where he pulled up the surveillance videos from last night. “I found a lead on the woman Saunterfield was giving information to.” He pulled up a picture on the projection screen. She was a pretty woman, with a strong jaw and curly blonde hair. “Jessica Rosenberg. She used to work for a company called _Cortex Enterprises_. Specifically, in the hippocampus department.”

“And in English that means…?”

“Memory. She specializes in enhancing learning and memory. Including studying treatments for patients with amnesia.”

John chewed through a tough bit of bacon. Of course he was familiar with those kinds of doctors. He just had no experience with them outside of the back alleyways of the city. He rubbed his forehead for a moment before finally replying. “Okay. So that definitely makes her suspicious. But just because she works with human memory doesn’t mean she programmed years’ worth of fake memory into a DRN.”

Dorian shrugged and pulled up another image of her. “Maybe not single-handedly. She quit _Cortex_ a few months back. I went through the liberty of accessing her bank statements, to see if she was getting money from any other sources.”

John stood up and walked to the table to get a better look. “Without a warrant. Breaking the rules, I like it.” John nodded with an approving smile.

Dorian only looked back at him and flashed a tiny little grin. “Thought you might.” And suddenly Kennex was painfully aware that he was still not wearing any proper pants. This was getting very bad very fast. And the DRN hadn’t even _done_ anything to warrant the feelings that John was suddenly feeling. “Turns out she is getting paid by _someone_. A wireless transfer. I tried to track it but no luck yet. I’ll have to run it through the precinct when we get to work.”

Dorian shifted a little, making more room for John at his side. John scooted closer to take a look at the surveillance footage, and the woman in question. If Rudy was able to get Darren up and running again, then they could ask him about Jessica, if she was in fact the woman Darren had been so willing to kill for. He examined her face, studying its nooks and crannies. He examined the videos as well. The way she moved around Saunterfield, the way she rolled against him, the way she whispered to him. It was seductive, deliberate. She had wanted to get caught. She wanted Darren to see, to get jealous. That much was clear.

Suddenly he felt a large, firm hand squeeze his left ass cheek. John jumped, immediately grabbing his partner’s hand and jerking it away from him. “Put some pants on John. You’re going to make us late. Again.” Dorian said, his voice barely above a whisper.

“You can’t give me _warning_ when you do that?” John grunted as he stepped away from Dorian, who simple steeled his resolve and looked away, staring forward as though nothing had happened. The detective only just shook his head and made his way back into the bedroom to get dressed.

John sighed, running his hand over the front of his boxers and giving his cock a hard squeeze. It was going to be a long day.

\---

Both Rudy and Maldonado decided to sit in during Darren’s second interrogation. John honestly didn’t believe that the day could get any worse. But knowing both Rudy and his boss were watching behind one-way glass to make sure nothing bad happened to the DRN? Yeah, it was a bit of a downer.

Dorian started off by flashing the picture of Jessica onto the data pad device. John watched carefully as Darren stared down at it. “Does this woman look familiar to you?” Kennex asked, stalking around the room, examining the DRN carefully.

“Jessica Rosenberg,” Darren finally said, his face firm but his eyes gave himself away. He was wounded and worried, full of emotion. Every part of him was synthetic, sure. But every part of him was also feeling, beating like human blood.  “She was my wife.”

Nobody spoke for a while. John opened his mouth to say something, but he realized he wasn’t sure what his next question was. Rudy was watching. He couldn’t correct Darren. He couldn’t turn the DRN into the stuttering mess that Dorian had become last night.

“You would have already known that,” Darren then replied, cutting the silence. “If there had been actual marriage records, huh? If there had been a rea…rekjds...rrr… _real_ marriage license. She d-d-dd-did something to me. I…”

“You were programmed nearly four days ago,” Dorian finished, his voice firm and gentle. “I’m sorry.”

“She needed you loyal,” John finally spoke. “She  needed you to have an emotional attachment to her. I’m very sorry but you are going to have to tell us everything you know. In the time you were together, did Jessica tell you anything about her job? About the people she’s working for?”

“Where we might find her?” Dorian then supplied helpfully.

Darren raised his eyebrows and shook his head. “I re-rrr-ea-reaally don’t know. I remember her favorite restaurants. Her fa-fff-favorite colors. The things she liked to do in bed. The rest was never there, I guess.” Darren hung his head, knowing that he was useless, that there was literally nothing in his memory to help them.

“How much did you love her?” John asked, not exactly sure where the question came from. But he had a feeling why he asked it, glancing at Dorian for only a second. Darren seemed to relax at the question though, as though he were no longer in pain.

“I still do. My emotions might be programmed, Detective.  But that doesn’t make them any less real. I’m angry and upset. But I do know I still love her. Deeply and wholly, until it hurts.” He glanced between John and Dorian for a moment, before his eyes fell onto John, boring through him. “Did you ask for a particular reason or…?”

Before John could say anything, Dorian spoke up. “When I was in your memory, I saw a bank. Any ideas?” He asked. But John could tell he was dancing around the fact that he tapped into the woman’s bank account. He was just looking for a string that might pull up some memories.

“Possibly the United Bank on 8th street? She did a lot of her banking there. She…” Darren stared off for a moment. “There were people there one day,” He said. “Three men. They got into an argument and there was something about money. Something about intelligence data.”

Dorian and John glanced at each other, Dorian giving him a nod before John moved closer. “What did they look like? What were they saying?” Darren only frowned in response. “I’m sure you remember. Somewhere in there.”

“One of them had blonde hair, real tall guy. The others were…” Darren fought to bring out the memory, his eyes moving frantically back and forth. “I remember. They were talking about data gathered from Future Minds Technology. They were talking about making a wire transfer for a memory chip, coded one-eight-sixttttttt…”

Suddenly, Darren’s voice began to falter again, him sputtering out sounds uselessly, over and over again. Dorian moved forward first, pressing the button below his ear in hopes of jolting him back into shape. He just continued to stutter and shake, his entire body tense and jerking. “Darren?” John asked, looking around nervously as the DRN hit the table uselessly, his entire body limp.

“I think you broke our witness,” Dorian said obviously, looking down at the synthetic on the table. But both the detective and his partner couldn’t hide exactly how uneasy the sight made them feel. Or how neither of them knew what this meant for the future. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here is my [tumblr](thepompouspickle.tumblr.com) . Feel free to stop by, say hi, and leave a writing prompt. I'm so bored all the time. Like, seriously.


	6. Chapter 6

“This whole case is a paperwork nightmare.” John ran his hands over his face in frustration before gathering up the files and handing them to Dorian. “Hand these off to an intern or something to fill out.”

“An intern?”

Dorian looked at him with a cocked eyebrow before John nodded. “Intern, visiting Academy student, I don’t care. Someone who looks clueless and like they’re just wasting space.”

“In that case, why don’t you just keep the files?” Dorian replied without missing a beat, his mouth turned up a little at the corners. He slid behind John to look over the notes.

“Very funny. Are you sure you weren’t designed to go into standup comedy?” John grunted out, resigning to the fact that he was going to have to sort out most of the paperwork himself. “Though, I gotta say, it’s nice not risking our lives for once. At least I don’t have to try so hard to get you out of trouble. ”

Before John knew what was going on, Dorian’s hands were on his shoulders. “Yeah. Because I’m the one always running headfirst into everything.”  The DRN’s hands kneaded into the muscles, and John hadn’t realized how tense he was until that moment. His palms moved firmly into his shoulder blades, working out knots that the detective hadn’t even noticed were there.

“Didn’t…” John grunted out, though it sounded a little too pleased and breathless for his liking. “Didn’t I tell you to warn me when you were going to do things like this?” He nearly groaned as he stretched himself backwards, forcing Dorian’s hands off of him. He was beginning to hate the way Dorian seemed to know what he wanted before he himself did. He was beginning to hate it a lot.

“I didn’t go for your ass this time,” Dorian said pragmatically, as though that somehow made all the difference.

“You just live to make things difficult for me, don’t you?” John looked up at him. And despite how sick this whole thing made him feel, the detective cracked a smile the minute he saw Dorian’s eyes flicker down at him.

Fuck. He was really in trouble.

“My memories aren’t right at the moment,” Dorian finally said with a shrug. “I get that. Rudy mentioned residue. And I can see why that’s bothering you. I’m trying to get it sorted out, but pushing me away isn’t helping. And it’s not helping yourself either, John.”

“Wow. Thank you Doctor Dorian. I’ll tell Tilden he’s fired and that there is a new psychologist in town,” John said, standing up stiffly and heading out towards Rudy’s lab. He took a breath for a minute, looking back at Dorian, who was standing there with a focused glare into the distance. “Look,” John finally sighed. “You aren’t yourself. You aren’t treating m…things the way you normally would. I still need you around though. So just…let’s get to Rudy’s.”

Dorian merely nodded, barely changing his facial expression as he moved onward. John could tell he was still thinking, still trying to get things together in that brain of his. They were nearly down the hall before Dorian spoke. “So no touching?”

“No touching,” John replied back, trying not to think about how hard it was to say that.

\---

“It would appear,” Rudy explained as he peeled apart Daren’s head on a work table, “That Darren’s memory has been all but completely wiped. His outside functions seem to work fine, as do most of his processers. However, his memory has been completely obliterated and he does not seem able of coming back online. Even if I could get him online…”

“He probably won’t be any use to us.” John finished and stared at the DRN on the table. Cold and lifeless, indistinguishable from a dead human. He felt a sick pang in the back of his throat. “What the hell did this? It wasn’t because…” He nodded towards Dorian, “You know?”

“I’m standing right here,” Dorian reminded him.

“No,” Rudy looked up at Dorian apologetically, giving his friend a small smile. “I don’t think it was from the memory probe, no. He was beginning to give you a code in the interrogation room. I have reason to believe that code somehow triggered a remote memory wipe.”

“The code did sound familiar,” Dorian finally said. “It started with one-eight, right? I might be able to access some of the memories I grabbed from Darren and…”

“No!” Rudy nearly shouted, altogether too quickly. The other two looked up at him immediately, startled. The scientist merely cleared his throat awkwardly and continued. “You seemed to have taken on…quite a few of Darren’s traits and memories. There is no telling if this trigger has also been transferred to you.”

“What? Like a computer virus?” John scrunched up his face, trying to picture Dorian with one of those Trojan horses that sometimes ended up on his computer at home. It seemed just a little too silly to be real.

“Much like a computer virus, yes.” Rudy shrugged, returning back to Darren, prodding around the purple tissues in his head a bit more. “However, I won’t know because _someone_ won’t let me run a full diagnostic to sort out his memories.”

“Yeah well _someone_ doesn’t want to work with an MX for a week while Sparkplug here gets his brain examined.” John shot back, trying not to make eye contact with Dorian.

Finally, Dorian spoke up. “So not only are half of my memories and feelings not actually mine, but now I can’t remember certain things or else my brain will completely wipe out,” he said, his voice and eyes betraying absolutely nothing about how he felt about this.

John mustered up a shrug. “Could do you good to stop thinking so much all the time.”  

“Great. Maybe you can teach me,” Dorian replied flatly, but his lips turned up just a little bit.

“You’re lucky I don’t just put you out of commission for a week right now,” John reminded him, turning out to leave. “Come on. We’re going to Rosenberg’s apartment to look around. See if we can’t dig anything up.”

\---

To no one’s surprise, Jessica Rosenberg wasn’t there. According to her files, she lived alone, in a large flat on the East Side. John and Dorian took the opportunity to take advantage of their search warrant over the place and took a look around. The whole place had been raked over by police already. Even then, there was not much to see. The apartment had been mostly cleared out.

“Looks like Rosenberg went on the run,” Dorian said, shuffling over the apartment, examining any object that had been left behind. “Computers, data files, paper trails, all gone. The woman was thorough.”

“Yeah but she didn’t have you,” John said as he tossed his partner a picture frame with a picture of her and Darren inside of it. “What can you tell me about this?”

“It’s a picture. Sometimes couples take pictures together,” Dorian said, with a little more bitterness than John wanted to acknowledge. “Not that you would know of course,” he muttered. He ran his hands over the picture and looked at it again. “We’ve been here once,” Dorian suddenly said, pointing to the place in the background of the photo.

John nodded, not recognizing the place in the picture at all. But this is what he wanted, some false-memory to spark up as a result of the picture. Years of memory or not, there were only so many places Darren could have gone in three days with Jessica. Odds are none of them were very far from the place where he was built. “Yeah? Care to refresh my memory?”

“Seriously? It was our first date, John. I can’t believe you don…oh” Dorian said, before he realized what John was trying to do. He blinked and stiffened his face, straightening his shoulders. “It’s this small park on the older part of town. The old downtown area before it moved. There are a few unused factories around there if you want me to try to…”

“Don’t. Remember what I said about thinking?” John said, not wanting Dorian to try to spark up some kind of memory again. It was best to let these things come naturally. He chose to ignore the exasperated expression that Dorian gave him. “Fine. We’ll take a look in the morning, when we’re slightly less likely to get mugged and murdered.”

“What? The Great John Kennex running away from daring heroics?”

“When there is no immediate threat? Yeah. I run away all the time.” John snorted out a laugh as Dorian put the picture down. There was no telling where Jessica was now and all they had as far as leads was a dead robot and a picture of an old park. There was no sense in running out to a series of abandoned buildings in hopes of finding something.

“Yeah,” Dorian agreed quietly, though he didn’t seem as convinced. “Yeah. Let’s go home,” he finally said as the DRN walked towards the door. John just tried to ignore how nice those words sounded coming from Dorian’s mouth. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here is my [tumblr](thepompouspickle.tumblr.com) . Feel free to stop by, say hi, and leave a writing prompt. Oh god I'm so lonely.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "And no one got laid that night": the fanfiction

John rolled his way to the fridge, sitting in an office rolling chair while his leg charged. His pants leg was tied up and there was a beer in his hand and Dorian was on the couch watching the news and for the first time in a few days, John Kennex was finally feeling pretty good.

He rolled over to the couch and hoisted himself onto the opposite end as Dorian. He handed the bottle over to Dorian. “Open that for me, would ya?”

“You drink beer every night and you don’t have a bottle opener?” The DRN snorted, leaning over and popping the cap open against the coffee table’s ledge, handing the bottle back over to John.

“Don’t ruin the coffee table. I got it on sale. Besides, aren’t you the human-shaped Swiss Army Knife?” John kicked back his leg and rested his foot on the wood. Dorian seemed to possess the common sense not to comment on it.

So the two sat in companionable silence for a while. Without even being prompted, Dorian flipped it over from the news and onto a basketball game.  John had enough of the news in his daily life. He didn’t need to know about all the other unsolved cases, all the crime, all the death. He wanted his time off to be between him, a bottle of beer, and his TV screen. And apparently Dorian too.

He never realized how much of his off time he actually spent with the synthetic before now. They’d go out to eat (one-sidedly) or drink (also one-sidedly) or to walk around shopping areas and make fun of each other’s taste in clothes (less one-sidedly). They’d go after work, before work, sometimes on the weekends. And John still couldn’t give Dorian the benefit of calling him a friend.

But now…

“Hey John,” Dorian asked, breaking the quiet concentration on the game. John didn’t care for either team, but it was fast-paced and something to watch. “I get that my memory is bugged, but when was the last time we had sex?”

John was mid-swallow when the DRN asked, causing the detective to choke on his beer and force it back up his throat. “I… _what?”_ he ran his hand across his face and tried to figure out a good way to approach this subject without causing Dorian’s memories to malfunction. Instead, all that came out was “We have _never_ had sex.”

It was the wrong thing and John knew it. Dorian stopped for a moment and blinked several times, his face flickering as he tried to get his facts straight. “De-dddd-ddd…Th…Th-the…that explains a lot,” he finally spit out.

“Excuse me?” John was expecting some kind of retort or apology but not Dorian rolling his eyes and acting like they weren’t talking about sex. “Like what?”

“Please,” Dorian said, motioning towards John on the other side of the couch. “You have a breakdown every time I’m near you. You’re twitchy and overly excitable. Not to mention…” Dorian nodded towards John’s trousers, “You got a substantial amount of back-up there buddy.”

John stiffened and turned slightly away from Dorian. “I know your memory is…’bugged’, but I’m pretty sure I told you to _never_ scan my balls again.”

“Oh I remember,” Dorian returned with a smirk. “You don’t have to scan _anything_ to know how long it’s been. This morning you were…”

“I had just woken up,” John defended quickly, ignoring the blood rushing straight to his ears and face. “It’s a common thing for most guys in the morning. Not that you would know.”  

“I’m just saying it wouldn’t be as common if we were a little more proactive in our relationship,” Dorian shrugged, turning his attention back to the game for only a second, before muting the TV altogether.

Great. Dorian still thought they were dating, after all that. And now he was trying to convince his way into John’s bed. And then John took a moment to actually _think_ about that fact for a second. “Wait. Are you trying to seduce me?”

Dorian only let out a small laugh, his smile as lopsided as ever. And John tried hard not to stare at his lips. Tried hard to remind himself of why giving Dorian the wrong idea was a very _bad_ idea. “No. Sorry to disappoint. If I were trying to seduce you, I’d tease you in all the ways you like.”

John finished off his bottle of beer and realized he was not nearly drunk enough to have this conversation. “And you realize ‘all the ways’ I like are fictional memories about a relationship between a robot and a female, right?” Screw trying to be tactful, at least causing Dorian duress would get him to be quiet for a while.

Instead, the opposite happened. Dorian straightened up, as though trying to prove a point. “You like when I cup your balls. Play with them a little, squeeze them just enough to feel some pressure. You like biting, both giving and receiving. Your neck is sensitive, as are your hip bones. You like when I twist my hand right below the head of your cock. You like when I bring you to the edge, only to pull you back. When I draw it out.”

“Can you not?” John said, wishing his voice were a little less breathless than it actually was. But he couldn’t deny that the images were there. And he certainly couldn’t deny what those images were doing to him.  

“Oh? So is that the false memory speaking or am I just lucky?” Dorian said with a small smile. Suddenly John was aware of how much closer Dorian had become. Right next to him, skin against skin, arms pushed against each other. And the DRN was only inching closer from there.

“Just lucky,” John murmured, wondering how close he was going to let Dorian get to straddling him before he decided to push him off.  He knew he’d have to, eventually. But his arms weren’t moving and Dorian’s legs were just pushing up on top of him. Soon they were face to face, nearly chest to chest. And Dorian was still grinning that stupid, one-sided grin.

“And _those_ are my seduction subroutines.” Dorian was now repositioning himself until he was fully straddling John. And John had never thought of himself as bad at self-control. But suddenly he realized that he had a man on top of him that he _very much_ wanted, who was _very much_ not in his right mind.

“Yeah. Too bad none of these subroutines are yours.” John felt his stomach sink as he straightened himself out, pushing back against the couch and slowly inching Dorian away from him. He felt mucus in the back of his throat, and thought for sure he was going to be sick to his stomach. And he couldn’t imagine getting vomit on the DRN would go over well with Rudy.

“Y…y-y-y-you can’t dwe know that.” Dorian replied. John only cocked an eyebrow. And both of them knew that Dorian’s stutter was more than enough proof to the contrary. “These memories _adapted_ , John. They didn’t tell me who to love, just that I was in love with someone. I had to have picked you for a reason. I can’t tell you what it is right now but when I get my memories sorted out…”

That was enough. That was more than enough. The “L” word. Thinking about when this was over. John had more than enough. He pushed the DRN off with as much might as he could. “Okay. Okay no.” Dorian stumbled back, well aware that he had, for the first time ever, said the wrong thing. “No. You know what? Go to sleep. Synthetic sleep mode. Synthetic off. Just…whatever works to get you to stop,” John frantically said as he slipped from under Dorian to get off the couch. He hadn’t talked to Dorian like that since they first met. Hell, Dorian probably couldn’t remember a time when John _ever_ talked to him like that. It probably hurt.

Good.

John stumbled backwards and clutched the couch as he gained his balance back. Dorian didn’t try to stable him. Dorian didn’t do anything. He only blinked, long and hard. His face was completely still, a hardened stone.

As John made his way back to the bedroom, he simply mumbled to himself, repeating comforting words over and over again. He told himself that Dorian would forgive him this was all over. That when Dorian’s feelings were sorted, Dorian would thank him. When Dorian no longer loved him, the DRN would be grateful for John’s words.  And everything would be back to normal and John would be able to get the image of Dorian crawling over him out of his head.

He told himself over and over.

And yet the words didn’t seem to help lull him to sleep. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, feel free to drop by my [tumblr](thepompouspickle.tumblr.com) to leave prompts or say hi or talk about the show! <3


	8. Chapter 8

Dorian didn’t speak to John on the way downtown.  Only to give coordinates and directions, really. It suited John just fine, though he couldn’t help but acknowledge that it was almost like having an MX partner. It was all too close to having an emotionless _robot_ sitting next to him. All because he wanted to do the right thing. Dorian would thank him, he told himself again. He’d be grateful that John didn’t take advantage of him. This was quickly becoming his mantra.  

But seeing Dorian staring forward, tight-lipped with blank eyes? Well, it was too much to think about. So John didn’t think about it. They got out of the car and walked along the park downtown in total silence. And John didn’t think about it.

He didn’t.

“Do you remember anything useful about these buildings?” John finally asked as they patrolled the area for abandoned warehouses. “Or, do any of them seem familiar to you at all?”

“Is it really a good idea to be dwelling on memories and feelings that aren’t my own?” Dorian replied. He had no malice in his voice. No bitterness or anger or sarcasm or _anything_. “After all, you did not seem too fond of me doing so last night.”

John winced, before regaining his composure. “Really? Because right now it seems like you dwelling on your emotions is getting in the way of solving the case.” John didn’t really want Dorian thinking too much on Darren’s memories. But at this point, it was the only way either of them were going to get anywhere with this case. It was the only hope they had on fixing Dorian and moving on with their lives.

Dorian seemed to catch his drift, but he didn’t seem terribly happy about it. Instead he merely blinked and turned his head towards the buildings. He glanced over at one towards the north. “That one looks familiar. 350 Yard Street. The address rings a bell too.” John glanced over to see Dorian’s face glowing blue as the DRN stared outward. “It used to be a storage warehouse for old machinery. Companies would keep machines there to use for later projects. It was abandonned three years ago.”

“Sounds promising.” John shrugged and nodded towards the building as they moved in closer. “Come on,” he finally said under his breath. “Let’s get you fixed.”

“I’m not broken.”

John pretended not to hear him.

\---

The warehouse was far from empty. Much of it was covered in several coatings of dust, but there was a fair amount of machines that seemed new. The whole place was a mess, but was definitely still in use by someone. “Well, whatever is going on here, whether it’s related to the case or not, I doubt it’s legal,” John mumbled more to himself than anything.

“What makes you say that?” Dorian rummaged through the mess to take a look at the newer-looking machines. John wasn’t far behind.

“Well for starters, we’re in an abandoned building. Secondly, I’ve never met anyone with a dusty workplace that isn’t up to something shady.”

“Yeah? Have you _seen_ your work desk lately, John? Or your apartment for that matter?” Dorian moved closer to one of the bigger machines, stepping carefully, making sure nothing he did made any sort of noise.

“Oh up yours,” John spat out, only to be met with bright eyes and a smirk. The Detective felt a jolt of energy in his chest at the sight, but he easily shook it off. He placed his hand against one of the new machines, only to furrow his brow and nod over towards Dorian. “It’s still warm.”

Without saying a word, the DRN made his way over and touched the machine as well, his hand and face both flashing blue. “Probably used less than an hour ago, judging by cool-down time and temperature.”

“Yeah, but what’s it _do_?” John glanced around, following a large pipe that connected the first machine to a second, substantially larger one. “And what can you tell me about this one as well?”

For the first time in nearly a day, Dorian finally smiled. “Slow down hotshot. I’m doing _useful_ police work here. Instead of just pointing at things.” he said as he looked over the machine. John merely rolled his eyes, but it felt good to see Dorian just a little bit back to normal.

After a moment of silence, the DRN spoke again. “Looks like a mutt of different machines. The chamber up there is designed to incubate cells, usually used in fertility clinics. Down here it seems to turn the cells into some kind of…serum.”

John and Dorian only looked at each other, and both of them knew that this could only mean bad things. Dorian immediately moved on to the second machine, staring at it for a long time. “This one seems…really familiar. I th-th-thhhh think my dsaccc…”

John moved towards Dorian and instinctively grabbed his shoulders, though he didn’t know if it was to steady him or comfort him. “Easy there. Don’t think about it. Just tell me what it does.”

Dorian nearly melted to him, as though he craved his touch. As though he could feel real sensation. John didn’t even bother pulling his hands away. Not this time. Dorian simply just looked over the machine again. “It’s very similar to a computer programming system, from what I can tell. It’s another hybrid. It looks like it designs data-processing codes. I’ll need a better look.”

Dorian broke away from the contact in order to move towards the monitor on the giant machine.  His face flashed blue and his eyes darted around as he turned on the screen and examined it. The light bounced off of his face and he frantically looked over the information. However, before he was done looking through the data, they heard a large screech on the other side of the warehouse. Someone was entering through the other set of doors.

Quick as a light, Dorian shut off the screen and moved away from the computer. Both cops stepped into the darkness and pulled out their guns, glancing at each other for only a second before John nodded, urging them onward towards the sound.

They heard a few more steps and a shuffle of paper. A woman cleared her throat. The two stepped closer in the shadows, before they caught a glimpse of a familiar woman with uncontrollable blonde curls and a strong jawline.

John was the one to move first, gun at the ready. “Jessica Rosenberg, freeze! Police!” He stepped out of cover, Dorian close behind, ready to run after the woman.

However, the woman didn’t move at all. Instead, she pulled out a gun of her own and aimed carefully at the cops. “I guess this puts me in a tight spot,” she said with sigh. “How’d you find this place? Did Darren manage to tell you? Or did you put him down like a dog before he could say anything?”  

The two cops said nothing for a moment, silence sitting between the three of them. “You’re coming with us for questioning,” Dorian said slowly, careful not to make any sort of sudden movements as he stepped forward. He could easily take a bullet better than John could, and they both knew it was best for him to move first.

Instead, Jessica only tilted her head, her eyes sparking with recognition. “Oh! Another one? Now that’s an interesting turn of events.” Jessica stepped forward in kind, without lowering her gun. Instead, she trained it on John, her eyes meeting his. “I installed a lot fail-safes on my DRN. I loved him, put a lot of work into him. There were codes to wipe his memory. Codes to trigger violence. Codes to trigger love.”

“That’s enough.” John did not like where this was going. At all. He nodded for Dorian to move forward, to grab the woman and read her the Miranda Rights. To force her to drop her weapon. Anything. Instead, he only stood here, his eyes searching, wanting answers that the woman might be able to give. John nearly growled. Now was not the time for Dorian to be having an existential crisis about his programming. Kennex took a step forward towards the woman, before she dropped the safety from her gun, ready to shoot.

“Don’t move!” Her voice rose substantially, before settling down to a collected tone. “I wasn’t done talking. I also installed a virus. To prevent your police dolls from breaking into his memories. It would overload the system with his memories and emotions. It would crash an MX in a matter of seconds.” She said, walking just a bit closer to the two. Dorian kept his gun aimed at her, tense and ready to pounce.

“Of course, I’m sure if another DRN got ahold of his emotions, he could follow some kind of paper trail back to the factory.”

“Who are you working for?” Dorian said stiffly, revealing nothing in his eyes. “We know you are receiving payments from someone.”

“Does this mean you feel some kind of attachment to me? Darren loved me. He loved me a lot. You should have heard the things he said to me.”

John spoke up this time, his voice sounding rougher than he would have liked. “Put the gun down and answer us, Jessica.”

“He was so _insistent_ in the few days we spent together. Telling me over and over that he never thought it was possibly to feel so _vividly._ Hell, I put the emotions there myself and Iwas beginning to think they were real. It was nice having someone care so much.”

“ _Answer us_ ,” John finally shouted, pointing his gun for emphasis. Jessica immediately fired at John, the bullet slamming right into the shin of his synthetic leg. The impact and force caused John to stumble back downwards, catching himself just before falling, muttering curse words over and over to keep himself from shouting out.

Dorian wasted no time rushing forward, ready to strike like the machine that he was. John watched for a moment before he focused on regaining his balance, swearing he could see a glimpse of anger in the DRN’s eye.

“One eight sixteen forty six B twelve. Operation: golden boy.” Jessica stated quickly, before Dorian could swing at her. “Ring any bells?”

“Shit,” John mumbled as he limped forward as fast as he could, heading immediately for Dorian. The synthetic shook his head several times, his face flickering blue. “Don’t think about it. Don’t _think about it,_ ” he said over and over to the DRN. But before he could help anymore, he noticed that Jessica was leaving, running swiftly to the exit.

John tried his best to stand up straight, ignoring that he synthetic leg was hardly working. Still, it was better than her hitting his actual leg. It was hard to balance, but in the end, he could hardly feel a thing.

He ran forward after her, his steps clunky. He aimed his gun for her kneecap. Two could play at this game. He watched her fall as the bullet collided, sounding off with a loud unpleasant crack. The noise thrummed throughout the whole building, her screams echoing. Her gun slid out of her hand from the shot. But she wasted no time crawling for it, blood spewing from her wound as she moved.

John raced to the gun as well, but was too late before Jessica started firing at him from the ground, grazing his arm once while the other two shots missed. Gritting his teeth, he moved forward, barely just getting his leg to move again. Jessica attempted to reload the gun, but didn’t manage to get even a single bullet in before John reached her, stepping on her arm with his one good leg.

“You can’t fix him,” Jessica said quickly, her voice drawn out and quiet. She hissed through the pain as John pried the gun from her hand. Quickly, he moved for his handcuffs and secured her against the nearest piece of machinery.

“Like hell I can’t.” He mumbled as he took a good look at the woman. She was sweating, but mostly unharmed, as long as you ignored the blood coming from her leg. No one would even question anymore bruises. He took the blunt of his gun and slammed it against the back of her head with as much force as he could muster, effectively knocking her out.

He grunted to himself as he watched her go limp. This case really was going to be paperwork hell.

John got on his communicator, dispatching forces to pick Jessica up from their address. They could take care of an injured criminal. And any doctor could deal with his own leg and arm. Only John could deal with the injured DRN, spewing out white noise and stuttered words in the darkness.

He limped back through the warehouse, his movements still clunky and his arm still aching. But for the most part, it was one of the least bloody standoffs he’s ever had to deal with. He finally reached Dorian, who was sitting against a machine, mumbling to himself, desperately attempting to get his facts straight, before everything slipped away.

“Don’t think about it,” John said again, hoping his voice didn’t sound as frantic as he felt.

“That only fmdmmmma makes me fdsfttstst think about it mffm more.” Dorian hissed out. “Lll like when someone tells you sndddd not to djcf think about ppp purple elephants. Yyyyou immediately th th th think of purple elephants.”

“Then think about purple elephants instead,” John supplied, kneeling next to Dorian. “Think about something else and you’ll be fine.”

“I’ll end up just like him,” Dorian said quietly. Too quietly. Too honestly. His eyes looked more crystalline than they had before. They were helpless. They were nearly empty, void of all feeling. John felt acid rise up through his throat at the look.

“No. You won’t,” John then said, surprisingly firmly. “You aren’t the same.”

“Our smdsmmm memories are…”

“Adapted. Your memories adapted, coded for you. Not for him.” He couldn’t believe he was saying this, after spending all that time trying to convince Dorian what he was feeling wasn’t real. Now here he was, telling him that his thoughts were his own. “They’re different. _You’re_ different.”

“Because I’m yours,” Dorian then said quietly, looking directly at John, his lips quirking into a half smile. If John hadn’t known any better, he would have thought Dorian had faked the breakdown. But his face was still flashing blue frantically, his eyes still devoid of their usual spark.

“You…you’re… _what?”_

“You said that, didn’t you?” Dorian sputtered out a laugh, before spewing out more crackling noises from his mouth. “Or am I making that up?” He paused for a moment before glancing out. “You’re different because you’re mine,” he then replied, replicating John’s voice perfectly.

John couldn’t help but laugh. It was kind of fucked up and awful but hey, it was a real memory for once. And if thinking about it made things a little bit normal, then who was John to judge, really?

“Yeah. Because you’re mine.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, feel free to stop by my tumblr and say hello! <3


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sass. Porn. Angst. [in that order]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Merry Christmas Eve y'all! Thanks for reading, as always. I don't say this often, but con-crit is welcomed and I appreciate anything y'all have to say. But anyway, enjoy the almost-porn (and Almost porn).

The ride back that night was awkward, to say the least. The music in the car felt strained between them, distant behind John’s own thrumming thoughts. He drummed his fingers against the steering wheel as he drove, trying to take his mind off of the throbbing pain in his arms, among other things.

“You really ought to see a doctor,” Dorian said finally. He then nodded towards John’s leg before adding, “And probably a technician. I’m sure Rudy could take a look.”

“Man’s got enough to do, between the MXs and Darren and well, you. Besides, Medical took a look at me when they picked up Jessica. I’m fine.” John responded a bit too stiffly. The medical team still had to fully treat Jessica in-custody before okaying her for questioning. It was going to be at least another day before John could get all of his answers.

But they did know that Jessica was working for someone, and that she set up Darren to kill Saunterfield to keep him quiet. What they didn’t know yet was _why_. And perhaps that didn’t matter in the short-term. But John had a feeling that they needed to find out.

“At least promise me you’ll let me look over it when we get back,” Dorian responded, his lips quirked up as always. “The leg. Not your arm. Though I suppose I could administer some first aid as well.”

“Sure. If that’ll keep you quiet about it,” John grumbled under his breath. Once he reached a stop light, he took a moment to look at Dorian. “What about you. Are you…”

“I’m fine. Shaken. Still trying to sort things out. But I’m fine.” Dorian returned the look, staring directly at John. He was smiling again. That bright, tiny smile of his that made his eyes even brighter than usual.

“And you still…?” John said, making a vague gesture above his head, hoping it insinuated what he was trying to get it.

“Not sure. Trying not to think too much on it. I think we’ve agreed that ends badly.”

“How long have we been working together?” John asked, hoping that would be a good enough way to get around the question, but he was unsure he actually wanted to know the answer.

“It will be four months next Monday.” Dorian said matter-of-factly. John felt something in his throat catch as his heart started pounding. He could nearly feel the blood rushing in his veins. “At least,” Dorian then added with a little head nod. “That’s what your file says. It feels like it’s been longer.”

“How much longer?”

“Six and a half years,” Dorian said with a small grimace. John returned the look with a wince. He wasn’t any better. Or at least, he wasn’t completely sorted out. He seemed to be thinking a little clearer than before. Maybe Jessica had helped him more than harmed him.

John stared at Dorian a little too long. He knew that he did. Examined his facial features, his hair, his eyes, his lips. He stared at his lips for way too long. He knew Dorian noticed. He’d have to be blind not to. And he wondered if he’d ever get away with staring at those lips like this ever again, once Dorian was fixed.

“John?” Dorian’s voice was soft, almost as soft as it was in the building, when he was breaking. John only looked up at him, meeting his eyes with a desperate face. “The light’s green,” he finally said, voice back to its regular tone.  

“Yeah yeah,” John mumbled, as though he had actually noticed. He started driving again and then moved to turn up the radio, in hopes of drowning out the silence between them. But Dorian spoke up first.

“It’s weird. It feels so _real_.” He didn’t even have to clarify for the two to know exactly what they were talking about. “I remember our first date. First kiss. Everything. You bought me a Roomba for Christmas last year.”

John snorted out a laugh. “Oh come on,” He said defensively. “It would make a good pet for you.”

“Good to know that even in my fake memories, you’re still a jackass.” Dorian responded, leaning back in his seat. “I remember the first time we had sex too.”

“This again?” John rolled his eyes, not exactly willing to have this conversation in a car, with a gunshot wound and a broken leg. “Was I at least any good in bed?”

“Not bad for a one-legged man,” Dorian laughed. And John couldn’t help but laugh along with them. It was strange. This time, the conversation felt okay. It felt natural.

_“Yeah. Because you’re mine_.” The words replayed in John’s mind again. And again.

“I’ll have you know that in real life I’m _great_ for a one-legged man. It’s all about balance. And skill. Not that you would know,” John retorted back as he turned down Broad Street towards his apartment complex.

“Is that a challenge?” Dorian quirked his brow as John parked and got out of the car. Dorian followed quickly.

“No,” John said, all-too-quickly as the two made their way up to his apartment, John limping as they went along. But he refused to let Dorian prop him up and help him to the elevator, or to his door. Or to the couch.

However, once he reached the couch, Dorian wasted no time in shoving John down onto the cushions. “I got to look at that leg. Sorry John, but you need to take off your pants.”

“How long have you been waiting to say that to me?” John couldn’t help but tease as he slid his pants down, trying to ignore how self-conscious he felt. But at the same time, it felt pretty good. He wanted Dorian. And Dorian wanted him right now. Maybe he wouldn’t want him in a few days but right now he did and John had nothing to feel awkward about taking his pants off in front of him.

“Not entirely sure. I don’t know if you’ve noticed John, by my memory is a bit off.” Dorian said as John folded his pants to the side and began to unhook his leg. Dorian began to run his hands around where the bullet hit, examining the damage before moving his hands up towards John’s thigh, and began to help unfasten the leg.

They both knew John could take care of it himself. But Dorian still moved for the release to power down the synthetic, running his hands along the edges of John’s skin, running his fingers just slightly under the fabric of his boxers. John couldn’t help but lean back on the couch a little and laugh. “You really are an asshole.”

Dorian hummed and pulled the leg off, moving it over to its charging table. He looked over the leg, only glancing at the detective for a moment. “I thought you didn’t want me,” Dorian said casually, too casually. “You really did a number on this thing John. If you had been taking care of it better, it wouldn’t have shattered so easily. It will take a few days to get it fixed.”

“I have a lower-quality one somewhere,” John responded. The doctors gave him another leg to get him used to the feeling before fitting him with his full-synthetic. It could work in a pinch. However, he was unsure whether he should even respond to the first thing Dorian said. What the hell, he decided. They were already this far into their Feelings Talk. “I never said I didn’t want you. I said I don’t want you while you’re brainwashed by some psychotic programmer woman.”

Dorian put down the leg and looked up at him, as though he hadn’t known John wanted him the whole time. As though John hadn’t made it achingly obvious that he was harboring feelings for the guy. “So you…?” Dorian asked, walking over slowly.

John groaned and let his head hit the back of the couch. The idiot was really going to make him say it, wasn’t he? “What does it even matter to you? I mean, can you even…you know?”

“Same as I can feel pain,” Dorian explained, straddling John’s lap again as though he belonged there. John only weakly scooted back on the couch, putting a little more distance between the two of them. It was strange how hard it was to say no to something he never knew he even wanted until now. “All touch registers into my data and I respond accordingly. And everyone wants to be wanted, John.”

Dorian ran his fingers over the wound on John’s arm, already dressed by the medical units. He then ran his fingers upward, over the fabric and onto the skin of John’s neck. “Let me,” Dorian finally said. It wasn’t begging or pleading. It was just a statement, a demand. But god if it didn’t threaten to undo John entirely.

“You’re not going to want this when this is over,” John said, realizing exactly how bad he was at putting his current desires over good life choices. Because here he was, letting Dorian straddle him and nuzzle his neck, lips moving across the junction of his shoulder lightly.

“Not if you keep acting like this,” Dorian agreed before straightening himself up again. John couldn’t help but move his hands around the DRN’s waist, though he kept telling himself it was so he could shove him away.

“Look,” John finally said, feeling a break in his resolve again. He wasn’t going to deny that he liked this. Because he did. And he wasn’t going to insist that Dorian’s feelings weren’t real. Even if they weren’t. But he wasn’t going to do _this._ He wasn’t going to take advantage of the idiot and have to answer for it later. “I’ve spent the past three days having a sexual identity crisis, thanks to you. I need to go freak out. Alone.”

Dorian pecked the base of his neck again with his lips, mouth wet but with no breath. It was all too strange for John to have to deal with at the moment. Luckily, Dorian climbed off and blinked in that way that he did when he was fed up with John. But his lips were curled into a smile, knowing somewhere, deep down, he had won. He was wanted. “Yeah,” Dorian finally said. “Just don’t have too much fun in there.”

John only grunted and took the moment to head back towards his room. He was long overdue a nice shower.

\---

John eased himself down onto the bench of his shower. His physical therapist insisted he have it installed after the Ambush. The majority of the time he still insisted on showering standing-up, even if it was difficult sometimes. Hell, half the time he just went into the shower with the synthetic leg on, consequences be damned. Some days it was easier just to pretend there was nothing wrong with his leg at all.

Times like this though, he was grateful for the bench. It made certain things easier. He spread out his legs and ran his hands over his thighs, moving towards his balls, and then finally up towards his cock. He palmed himself, not even fighting it anymore. He was going to think about Dorian. He knew he was. He spent too long _not_ thinking about Dorian. And if he wasn’t going to let the guy touch him, the least he could do was allow himself to think about it. Just this once.

So he imagined it. Imagined letting those encounters on the couch go exactly where he wanted them to go. Leaning back on the sofa with Dorian between his legs, biting at his neck and grinding against him as though he were desperate for friction. He would tease John, of course. He would thrive on making him squirm and beg for it. And John would return the favor in kind, by denying Dorian exactly what he wanted. And maybe John’s brain was applying too many human attributes to Dorian’s body, but his dick certainly didn’t care as it throbbed in his hands.

He imagined that too, of course, Dorian’s hands. Large, nimble, soft with that strangely inhumane skin, but rough in the parts where it counted. His hands were quick and he was easy to adapt. He could picture those searching eyes, unblinking as they processed the man under him. Taking in every gasp, every moan, and every desperate twitch with rapt attention, squeezing every inch out of him like a machine, but craving him like a man.

And John let himself imagine it further. Dorian’s voice, begging, saying his name over and over like it was the only thing he knew. His voice slipping into other tones in a fit of ecstasy. The DRN losing himself in John, as easily as John wanted to lose himself in Dorian. And it wasn’t real. Hell, maybe it wasn’t even physically _possible._ But for that moment, water running down his body and satiated from a good orgasm, John couldn’t care any less.

And then that moment passed.

He dried himself off, propped up against the wall. He thought about the man on the couch. Thought about inviting him to stay on the bed while he did his nightly charging routines. Thought about how nice it would be to wake up next to a human-shaped body in the morning.

Thought about what Dorian would say to him when this was all over.

He left the bathroom, slid on a pair of boxers and climbed into the bed, trying not to notice how cold it suddenly felt. Trying not to think about Dorian, or Anna, or how making emotional attachments always ended with him staring at the ceiling, meditating on self-loathing. 


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finally. Sheesh. Sorry. Holidays hit me HARD, plus a lot of sewing things took over. The next two chapters should come pretty quickly though! Thanks for hanging in there, Friends!

Dorian was still charging by the time John was awake. It was strange to see him lying there, where his synthetic leg usually was. The leg was shattered, propped up on the side of the table, forgotten and useless. Just the way John liked it, really. John had already strapped on the spare synthetic, a rudimentary thing that the doctor’s had given him to prevent the shock of losing his leg to worsen his condition. John knew it made people stare at him more, made his missing leg completely apparent. But he preferred the old-fashioned one.

He didn’t know how to wake up Dorian. It seemed he was always usually awake by the time he came to get him. And on the rare occasion that he was running late…well, John didn’t like to think about that. About the MX with his doll-like eyes and doll-like…everything else. And how Dorian was definitely not like that…down there.

Christ. Now he was thinking about it.

He ran his hands over his face and looked at the DRN. He looked so strange, sleeping there, not breathing but not lifeless either. He was processing in there, still thinking. Always thinking. Before long, he will have sorted through his memories, processed John into oblivion, and categorized him into the proper folder. Partner. Friend. Not lover.

John ran his fingers across Dorian’s cheek anyway. It was affectionate. The kind of affection he hadn’t been compelled towards since Anna. He felt sick, but he didn’t stop. Dorian’s skin flickered blue under his hand, processing his touch like data, taking in every brush of his fingertips. He ran his hand down to Dorian’s neck, entranced as the little blue lights followed him.

He wanted to know how Dorian broke down these touches, how he classified them. He wanted to know if the lights applied to every part of his body, absorbing every touch.

Dorian opened his eyes in an instant, but the smile on his face grew slowly. John removed his hand from Dorian’s arm, watching as the lights shut off. “You’re in a good mood,” Dorian said, his voice hushed and cautious, as though he didn’t want to ruin the moment.

“I was. But now you’re awake so there goes that.” John had a hard time holding back his smile. This was a bad idea, acting so casual like this, acting like this was every morning. But it was just so _easy_ , so natural to let Dorian into his life.

And that terrified him.

Dorian sat up and looked over his partner, examining every part of him. The man was mostly dressed for work, his hair still a little bit messy and his eyes still filled with sleep. Dorian looked down at John’s leg and smiled. “It suits you.”

“Yeah, sure.” John grumbled, turning away from the table. “It will be interesting, at least. Most of the people at the precinct haven’t seen me without the robo-crutch. Can’t wait to hear what Paul has to say about this,” he deadpanned, nodding down to the rudimentary prosthetic he was currently wearing.

Dorian got off the table and unhooked himself from the charging board, rolling his neck to loosen his joints. John’s eyes followed the curves in his neck, bulging like real muscles, thought about what it was like to bite and suck at them. “You’re more than the sum of your parts, John,” Dorian said altogether too casually as he grabbed his coat and began to head for the door.

John moved to grab his coat as well, before Dorian grabbed his arm. “Leave it. I like the gun holsters,” he said with a small smirk, his eyes containing a small promise that John knew he wouldn’t fulfil, that John wouldn’t _let_ him fulfil. But he didn’t mind thinking about it all the same. No harm in a little wishful thinking. John left the jacket by the door.

\---

“It’s freezing,” John said as he turned up the heat a little higher in the car. “Why did I let you talk me into this?”

“Because I like the way you look in the shoulder holsters. Always have.” Dorian said with a shrug and small smile, looking over at John with those pale blue eyes and big lips and…

John really was well and truly screwed at this point.

“Yeah? Why didn’t you say so earlier then?” John was still skeptical, and had every right to be. Just because he wasn’t fighting as actively didn’t mean he had to believe everything Dorian was telling him.

Dorian’s face flickered blue and his eyes went distant, wounded. “Not sdffdss-sure. Probably because you wouldn’t have taken it well.”

John couldn’t deny it. He still wasn’t taking it well. Wasn’t really taking anything all that well, to be honest. It was a lot to take. “Yeah well, one day I’m barely coping with my annoying android partner and the next he’s jumping my bones, convinced he’s in love with me. It’s a lot to deal with.”

Dorian didn’t even bother with arguing. “You said it yourself. I’m yours. One way or another, you’ve developed some attachment to me that makes me different from other androids. It’s okay if you don’t feel the same for me. Just…admit that I belong to you.”

John stopped for a moment, hovering his hands over the heaters to warm them. He opened his mouth to say something, but he was unsure of really what he wanted to say.

Instead, the police radio unit chimed in to save the day:

_We have a robbery on 8 th Street. Perpetrators are armed. Requesting all units in the area to report. _

John and Dorian only glanced at each other for a mere second before John slammed his foot on the gas pedal.

\---

The outside of the bank already had four MXs holding cover outside, guns armed and standing combat-ready. With another look exchanged between the two, Kennex and Dorian drew out their own guns and slowly approached the building.

The door was guarded by two large armed men, who were most certainly not cops. No other openings to the bank seemed to be open.  Dorian’s face flashed before he began to prattle off the schematics of the building. “There is one back entrance around the other side. I’m not picking up any heat signatures guarding the exit, but I could be too far away to tell.”

“Probably because the robbers rounded everyone away from the back. They already know that we have them surrounded. File in with the Captain to see if they’ve made any moves to negotiate.”

“I sent in the request for information. However, she…hasn’t gotten back to me,” Dorian said quickly. John furrowed his brow. That was definitely _not_ normal of Maldonado. “There are approximately 25 people inside, from what I can pick up. There doesn’t seem to be much point in gaining entry through the back. This would be better settled with blunt force.”

“I like the way you think,” John replied immediately, with a slight shrug as he pulled from behind cover and nodded towards the MXs to follow him in, providing a human-shaped barrier between him and the guards.

But when they approached the building, the guards didn’t do so much as smirk as they moved towards the MXs. They didn’t even touch their guns. The one of the left grabbed one MX by the throat and placed something on its right temple, immediately shutting the bots down. The other guard followed suit, dispatching each Synthetic with ease and expertise.

That’s when John and Dorian began shooting, running to take cover as the guards returned fire.

“We have company. We’ve disabled the MXs but the human and DRN are now firing at us. I’ve disabled all other police dispatches in the area but more might come at the sound of gunfire. Get the money and get moving,” Kennex overheard one of the guards mutter into a mouthpiece.

Immediately, John moved to call in for backup, only to realize that the guard was right. The communication line was completely dead in the area. “How the hell…?” John muttered to himself, glancing out towards Dorian, taking cover across the way. How in God’s name did a mere guard manage to do that while shooting at a whole line of MXs and two cops?

And then it occurred to John that maybe these men weren’t all that human.

Firing three shots as he moved behind a line of police cars, John made his way to Dorian. “These men aren’t Synth…androids, are they? Because I’m pretty sure I grazed one and I’m pretty sure he’s bleeding actual blood but…”

Dorian nodded. “Yeah. Call me crazy, but I have a hint of what’s going on here,” his partner said before breaking cover and firing quickly before heading back down.

“Yeah? You going to tell me because we don’t actually have a lot of time. The culprits are moving out and they’re moving quick.”

“They seem to be operating on a similar network to me. I’m sensing interference that only synthetic models can access.” Dorian said quickly as John glanced under the car. The guards were moving closer, but not firing. “Once upon a time, they tried to make androids as human as possible. That didn’t work.”

“So now they’re making humans as android as possible. But if that’s the case, can’t they just access wire-transfers to the bank? Why an armed robbery?” Kennex grunted.

“You don’t find it strange that you seem to be the only human here? That none of those MXs had human partners?”

It immediately hit John. This was a set-up. They hacked the frequencies to draw the two out. “Rosenberg,” he muttered under his breath as he stood up from behind the car. “Stay down Dorian. They want you for the information you got from Darren.”

Dorian only looked at him with an unmoving stare. And John knew for a fact that Dorian was probably not going to listen to him. Nothing new on that front. John moved to break cover and started firing. Well, at the very least, it was nice to _not_ be the one the bad guys were gunning for, for a change.

He ran for the guards before the other robbers came running out, guns also in tow. Dorian immediately bolted behind them for a better vantage point for the ensuing firefight. John fired his gun two more times, felling one of the robbers before another came at him, guns blazing.

And that was the last thing he remembered before hearing three large cracks and a quick flash of light. He felt his head crack against the asphalt and could vaguely make out sirens blasting in the distance. His vision was fuzzy and there wasn’t a single part of him that didn’t feel like it was either bleeding or on fire. Or both. His insides felt like they were boiling.

He glanced down to see blood spilling from his arms and his hip. His other prosthetic leg was completely shattered. He let out a laugh, only to find that he had also been hit slightly below the lungs. He coughed out, unsurprised to find out he was coughing out a little bit of blood.

This seemed all too familiar.

He had been here before.

He could still see the lights of the bomb fading and feel his leg being blasted off and make out just a little bit of Anna’s face in the distance. He could still see Pellham lying there, cold. His ears were ringing. He felt like shaking and screaming and rocking his body against the ground. But he could hardly move, hardly breathe.

“Stay with me John,” he finally heard a voice say, pulling him back to the present. “You can’t do this. Not now. You don’t have the lungs to start hyperventilating on me.” His tone was all too casual, laid back and gentle. John felt himself move his hands towards the man, grasping for him. He didn’t know what was going on. But he wanted the synthetic there next to him.

“You’re okay,” he finally managed to choke out, sputtering out a bit of blood. “Where are the robbers?”

“Dead,” Dorian said, his tone altogether too firm, too dark. John stiffened. “I disabled their dispatch override. Everyone is here now. The ambulance is almost here. You’re going to be okay.”

“They shattered my other fake leg,” John said, a bit dryly given his situation. “The doctors are never going trust me another.”

“We’ll give you a peg leg. Call you Legless John. Like a pirate.” Dorian joked. John felt arms around him. They weren’t warm arms, not real human contact. But they were strong and solid and safe and they were Dorian’s and that made them just as good.

“Only if Maldonado gives you an eye patch.” John spat out, watching idly as blood dripped down him, trailing behind as Dorian carried him towards something white. Probably an ambulance. He was going to pass out. He knew he was going to pass out. That’s what always came next. And then came the big sleep.

“Everyone will call me the One-Eyed Android. It’ll be great,” Dorian’s voice was soft. His arms heavy. He was still holding onto John as more and more people surrounded then in the vehicle.

They were quiet, for a long time. But Dorian kept touching John, just to keep him up, keep him alert. Things were so heavy. It would be so easy to go to sleep. And he knew about a million reasons as to why that would be a bad idea, why that would only worsen the blood-loss.

“I’m really sorry John,” Dorian said quietly, his voice soft and lacking any vibrations. It was flat, made without any form of echo so that no one could here. No one but John. “I love you.”

John only grunted, not in the mood for speaking. Not in any physical _shape_ to be speaking. He didn’t even know what happened out there, what Dorian needed to be sorry for. He only rolled over as a doctor latched onto him to steady him. “Yeah. I know.” 


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And then they fucked.

Captain Maldonado was in the hospital room when John woke up. She was staring at him intently, studying every single detail on his face. He merely groaned. “Please don’t tell me it’s been another two years,” he rasped out. This was different from the coma, he could tell. But it didn’t mean he wanted to be cooped up in a hospital bed longer than he had to be.

“Five days. You’ve been in and out of consciousness though, from what the doctors and your partner has been telling me.” She made her way towards the bed and slid down in the room’s chair, still studying him carefully, trying to figure out the best way to say what she had to say.

“So no ‘Welcome Back’ party then?” John huffed out with a small laugh. He felt a bit weak, as much as he hated to admit it. But the pain was almost gone. He looked down to see that a new rudimentary synthetic had been strapped to his leg for the time being. There were bandages on his ribs and arm, but he felt pretty good. “They either gave me _really_ strong drugs or I’m feeling a lot better.”

“You’ll be back home in another day or so. You are making a quick recovery. However, you’ll be required to stay at home for another week before returning to the precinct,” her tone dropped as she stared intently at the man. “And I will personally sure you don’t return before then.”

“You really know how to put a damper on my good mood,” John replied. Though, he wasn’t really in a good mood at all. He was feeling better, sure. But really, anything short of dying would have felt better than what happened outside of the bank. However, his memory was still fuzzy on all that had happened. He opened his mouth to ask, but Maldonado only shook her head.

“You were shot three times,” she answered, seemingly already knowing exactly what he wanted to know. However, then she paused, going back to staring at the man. John knew she was holding something back. Finally, the woman continued. “However, you also took blunt hit to the side, cracking your ribs and adding to your injuries significantly. The doctors likened it to you being knocked down by a moving vehicle.”

John only furrowed his brow. From what he could remember, there were five robbers in total, and none of them had direct access to any vehicle. They had to have had some sort of backup in order to make that happen. “Did you catch the driver?”

“There was no driver, John.” The Captain’s tone was severe, already getting down to business despite the fact that Kennex had just woken up. She was using his first name. And John immediately knew that there was something wrong. “The doctors say the blunt force had come from a more compact source.” She paused for a moment before continuing. “Dorian’s video report showed that he knocked you down to save you from any fatal blows that the gunshots would have inflicted. If he had not, then the shot on your arm would have hit your heart. However, he nearly caused you blunt force trauma. The strength inhibitors in his systems seemed to have been overridden for some reason.”

John took a moment to calculate this, moving to sit up in his bed. He was still a bit sore and aching. But for the most part, he felt like he always did. Which wasn’t great, but it was better than dead. “You’re suggesting that Dorian hurt me.”

“No. I’m stating it,” the Captain sighed, softening her expression to look at her employee. No, to look at her friend. “We are certain it wasn’t on purpose. Further in the video, we saw what he did to those men. The men who hurt you, Detective. Most of them were unrecognizable when we got the bodies back. Almost all of the artificial intelligence that they had implanted themselves with was destroyed.”

Suddenly, John didn’t feel so well anymore. He became nauseous, glancing around the room for some kind of trash can or sink that he could get to. He took two large breaths before looking up at the ceiling and pulling himself together. “Anything we can use against Rosenberg?”

“Perhaps. Rudy is looking into it.” Sandra paused again for a moment, her eyes raking over John, examining him for any kind of reaction. “Dorian was emotionally compromised, wasn’t he? Not fit for service.”

“He’s been that way before. I’m sure you remember what he was like after the Solar Flare,” John said with an eye-roll, to punctuate his point. He grabbed a glace of water from his bedside table and drank it slowly. “You can’t ask the nurse to give me something stronger, can you?”

“I asked Rudy about it, John. He told me about the emotions and memories that Dorian had picked up from Darren. The exact kind of emotions that made Darren dangerous.”

John put the cup down and gave out a little groan. He definitely needed something to drink for this conversation. “Yes. And I was focused on the case. I made a mistake. We can still get Rosenberg for assaulting a police officer though. Dorian didn’t destroy everything. And I’m still alive.”

“We’re going to try to sort out his memories manually,” the Captain then said quickly, to quell John’s worse fears. The last thing John wanted was to decommission Dorian again, and call him a lost cause. But they both knew that wasn’t the case. They both knew the real lost cause here was John. “The whole process will take about a week. We think it will be ample time for you to fully recover.”

Kennex nodded, not wanting to ask where Dorian was at the moment, not wanting to admit that he wanted to see him again. He didn’t want to argue but he didn’t want Sandra to leave him alone either. He just wanted to figure things out and get better. And _be_ better. And stop feeling like the past was a brick wall that he kept hitting. And he wanted to sort out his own feelings in the meantime.

\---

Two days later and officially homebound, John was staring at the spare room of his apartment. His trophy room. Or, the left half was his trophy room. Knick knacks and medals and certificates from high school flooded his walls. There was a picture of him, twenty years younger with two legs and his arm around a beautiful blonde. Her name was Cynthia. They hooked up for a few weeks after John helped his team take the division title. It had been nice, but it hadn’t been what he wanted.

He looked at the other half of the room. There was a wardrobe and a desk, and some boxes. They were filled with jewelry and some clothes and pictures. Holographic photo albums full of John, still with two legs and this time with another woman. Her name was Anna. And in the end, that hadn’t been what he wanted either.

Now John didn’t know what he wanted.

The doorbell rang about six times in a row. And John knew exactly who it was, despite his brain telling him not to get his hopes up. He grabbed his crutch and moved towards the door. “Yeah, yeah. Your mom ever teach you to be patient?” he shouted, feeling a lot more sleepless than he actually was. God, he felt so old.

“Never had a mom,” Dorian said immediately when John opened the door. Dorian only smiled at him. That full, honest smile that told John that he was still broken, still in love with him. Kennex wasn’t sure what his heart was doing, but he wished it would stop. Still, he stepped out of the way and let the android inside.

“Shouldn’t you and Rudy be playing Doctor right now?” John asked as Dorian waltzed through the room like he owned the whole apartment. And the way John was staring at him, he might as well have. He fell onto the couch easily and kicked up his feet, altogether too happy to be there.

“We’re starting tomorrow,” Dorian said flatly, his tone suddenly dropping. He stared at John for a few moments before the detective sat in the armchair next to the couch, placing his crutch to the side. They sat in silence for a long while. Neither knew what to say. John really didn’t know what he wanted to say. He didn’t know if he should apologize or explain himself. He only knew that he didn’t want to talk about it, even though he also knew he should.

Finally, Dorian spoke again. “When criminals are about to executed, they are allowed to request one last meal. Any meal of their choice.”

John knew this. Of course he did. And he knew the implications of this. But instead, all he could do was cock a single eyebrow. “I was your last meal?”

“You’re the only person I wanted to see,” Dorian then corrected, with a little too much finality.

John sat still for a moment, before finally glancing back at the door to the spare room. He closed his eyes for a moment before sighing and opening his mouth to speak. “I don’t have much memory from before the ambush.”

Dorian looked at him, looking genuinely surprised for the first time in a long time. John couldn’t blame him. It did seem like a random thing to talk about at a time like this. “I remember lying there,” John stared slowly, “Looking at my partner, looking at my leg, and looking at the people who had ruined my entire life. I couldn’t remember why I had done it. Why I had sold us out. I couldn’t remember why I trusted them. But I knew I did. And then I saw her face.”

“Anna was one of them,” John continued quietly, finally looking back up at Dorian, who was only staring. He absorbed every drop of information, every bit of data as if he was going to actually remember it tomorrow. John wasn’t entirely sure that he would. “She disappeared after that, of course. I’ve gotten close to finding her, but I don’t know if I actually want to see her again. I spent all this time wondering why I trusted her. Wondering if she felt anything at all for me. Wondering if she was lying when she told me that she loved me. I never am going to get those answers.”

Dorian nodded, as though completely understanding. It seemed to suddenly all make sense to the android. John couldn’t accept how Dorian felt. He couldn’t tell if it was real. Even if it weren’t for the incident with Darren, John didn’t know if he would have accepted Dorian’s feelings as real. But he did know that he wanted them to be real. He wanted to believe in what Dorian was feeling. “I’m sorry I put you through that, John,” the DRN finally said, “I tried to f-ffff-edfg-force myself on you. But I want you to know that what I’m feeling is…”

“Save it,” John said quickly, still not willing to hear it. “Look, when you’re…when this is all over,” he struggled to find the right words. “Move into the spare room.”

Dorian’s face flickered blue, trying to put his memories together. John sighed, remembering that Dorian still thought that they had always lived together. The DRN opened his mouth to say something, a little bit of white noise leaking out. John quickly interrupted. “No. Don’t think about it. You used to live with the MXes. That ended badly. And then you moved in with Rudy.”

“I’m sure that ended badly too?”

“Worse,” John smirked, reveling in Dorian’s little smile. The mood was getting too tense for him anyway. “They gave your own place,” he said slowly, watching Dorian’s face flicker as he tried to get it right. “You complained about it a lot. You complain about a lot of things though so I kind of just tune it out. And let me tell you, you are a hard man to ignore sometimes.”

John looked away and chuckled to himself. By the time he looked back, Dorian was standing in front of him.  John knew he was arching his head up to look at him, to meet him as the DRN was bending downward. And before John really could think about what he was doing, he was wrapping his arms around Dorian’s neck and drawing him in closer. “Really hard to ignore,” he repeated as Dorian’s lips ghosted over his.

“Is this alright?” Dorian asked, though he didn’t seem nearly as unsure or uneasy as John felt. But John wasn’t going to say no. Not tonight. Not before this all went away and Dorian stopped looking at him like that and smiling at him like that and leaning into him and sliding onto his lap like he belonged there his whole life.

He couldn’t run into his feelings like they were a brick wall.

Not right now. Not tonight.

“I don’t know. You tell me,” John replied dryly, pushing his lips further against Dorian’s, strengthening the kiss. John peeked his eyes open just enough to see Dorian’s face flashing blue, taking in every bit of the sensation and processing it fully.  He wasn’t sure if he should stand up to meet Dorian or pull Dorian down to him, so instead he arched up awkwardly until his groin was nearly touching the DRN, while simultaneously putting his hands around Dorian’s head and pulling him down.

The synthetic merely broke away, causing John to crash back down on the chair. His wounds were still sore, causing him to hiss in pain as he landed. “If you rip your stitches, Maldonado will kill me.” Dorian gently tugged at John’s arm, pulling him. John stumbled onto his leg before following Dorian onto the couch. The DRN draped himself over John as the detective laid back easily.

“She still might kill you,” John said with a dry laugh. Dorian began to run his lips across John’s neck, biting and licking at the skin there. John moved his neck back to give him more space. Dorian had mentioned remembering how much John liked being bitten. John didn’t realize until now how true that fake memory had been. “We don’t know what she’s planning for tomorrow.”

“Hmm…she won’t get rid of me. She can’t,” Dorian responded, the lights in his fingers flashing and pulsing as they worked their way under John’s shirt and pulled it off. John returned the favor, unbuttoning Dorian’s shirt and skirting his hands against his chest. He was entranced by the way Dorian’s skin absorbed his touch, as though it were craving more of him, memorizing every piece of him.  

“Yeah? Why’s that?” John asked, less and less interested in the conversation and more interested in the fact that he and the DRN were both very shirtless and pressing their bodies closer and closer together.

“Because she needs you.” Dorian was certain as he began to move his hand down John’s torso, towards his belt buckle. “And you need me.”

John didn’t give a response, didn’t think it warranted one. Instead, he just moved his own hands around Dorian’s belt loops and dragged the DRN’s body against his. His skin was smooth, his muscles strong, but there was a clear difference between man and machine. There was no mistaking, not even for a minute, who he was with. He couldn’t close his eyes and pretend Dorian into some human form. And that only turned John on all the more. “Shit,” John muttered, arching back up and grinding his hips upwards against Dorian, tugging the DRN close so that he wouldn’t have to strain his injuries.

He didn’t care about how he looked, half-dressed, half-hard and desperate for friction. He didn’t care about a lot of things. All he could think about was Dorian fumbling around on top of him, nibbling at his neck and ears, hands running all over his body.

John couldn’t keep his hands off Dorian. It had been too long trying to resist. He fumbled at the buttons of Dorian’s pants sloppily. The DRN only laughed and began to help him out, sliding his clothes off. When John finally got the pants down, he was a little surprised to see Dorian harder than he was, cock straining through his boxers.

“Well look who’s a happy toaster,” he laughed under his breath as he slid his hands lower. Dorian began to follow suit, unbuttoning John pants and finally prying his mouth away from the detective.

“I just wanted to show you that I’m enjoying this,” Dorian said quietly as John ran his hands across the waistband of the DRN’s boxers. All the while, he was trying to kick and wiggle out of his own clothes, leading to undignified squirming while Dorian helped him out of his clothes.

“Yeah?” John replied, choosing to ignore the fact that Dorian was watching him flail out of his own pants. “So you can just put it up whenever you like? What? Does it make a little slide-whistle noise when you bring it up?”

Dorian laughed and opened his mouth, a long slide-whistle sound escaping. John laughed too, despite himself. He was now mostly naked and completely turned-on and he had a fantastic body against him and everything felt natural. He was still wounded and one-legged and broken inside and out. But for the first time in a long time, he felt like everything was alright.

He pressed his lips to Dorian’s and began to suck on the android’s bottom lip. And then and only then did he realize why he fought this for so long: because this was going to be so hard to give up come tomorrow morning.

They continued like this for a little longer, grinding and kissing and mumbling at each other. It was slow and steady, Dorian moving only at John’s pace, completely dedicated to John’s pleasure and nothing else. Lights all over his body flashed at every bit of skin-on-skin contact. John didn’t think a thing like that could turn him on. God knows he wouldn’t have thought that four months ago, watching Dorian ‘disco-face’ for the first time. But now he let out a needy groan when his DRN lit up for him, the lights in his torso dancing under John’s fingertips.

His.

All his.

John couldn’t help but moan again, picking up the pace on his grinding. “We’re going to have to move this along,” he said finally, his voice absolutely breathless. “As much as I enjoy smacking face, I’m going to need something a little more…oh,” he said, as Dorian’s hands removed John’s boxers and went to work.

John opened his mouth to say something, anything really. But he didn’t really know what to say. For a simple hand job, it was good. Better than good, actually. Dorian wasn’t kidding when he said he knew what John liked. And he didn’t even care how he knew it. Sometimes his pressure was a little strong, and his grip a little harsh, but John didn’t care too much. And then when Dorian started assaulted his neck and chest and mouth and ears with his mouth again? John didn’t care about anything else in the world.

“Do you…fuck…have to look so smug about this? God, keep doing that,” John huffed out, moving under Dorian as much as his wounds would let him.

“Just enjoying you,” Dorian said, his voice back to that private whisper that he had used in the ambulance. He continued to work, bringing John right to the edge over and over and keeping him there. “Enjoying what I’m doing to you.”

John grunted, digging his hands into Dorian’s skin. He began to buck a little more insistently, before Dorian finally began to lick at the shell of his left ear. And John couldn’t help himself. He came with a shudder and moan, becoming slack against the couch as Dorian melded himself over him, as though the DRN were somehow also spent.

John stared at the ceiling for a moment. He didn’t really want to go to sleep. He wasn’t even tired. Just satiated and confused and delighted and frustrated, all at the same time. But he knew that sleep was the most logical step in what to do next. He knew that going to bed would let him avoid talking about what had just happened and any emotions he might be harboring.  

It also brought him closer to Dorian leaving and getting his feelings fixed. It brought him closer to the end of all of this. But like ripping off a Band-Aid, he knew it had to be done.

He gently kneed Dorian in the chest. “Up,” he said softly, causing the DRN to get up and pull John up after him.

“Heading to bed?” Dorian cocked an eyebrow as his partner nodded. “Didn’t know your stamina was that low, John.”

“I’m out of practice.” John let Dorian help him to the bedroom, let Dorian watch as he slid on a clean pair of boxers and climb into bed. And he let Dorian climb after him, sliding into the bed with natural ease. “You’ll risk your charge if you stay here,” John said with futility, knowing there was probably little way to change Dorian’s mind. And he wasn’t all that sure if he wanted it changed.

“Then I’ll be Rudy’s problem,” Dorian retorted, sliding next to John and wrapping his legs around him under the covers. John nearly rolled back, taken at how cold parts of Dorian’s body were, particularly his feet. He had noticed before, but John’s own body had been so full of heat that it didn’t really register.

“Christ you’re freezing,” John mumbled, trying to back away as Dorian continued to tangle himself with John, without a single care in the world. “God,” he then laughed. “When I was little, I used to crawl into bed with my mom sometimes. I’d place my feet against her legs and she would gasp and kick me away, complaining how cold they were.”

“Yeah?” Dorian said, placing his feet on John’s shins and wrapping his arms around the man’s waist.

“I kept doing it. I thought it was funny,” Kennex concluded, burying his face into the pillow, finally actually feeling tired. He didn’t really want to sleep. In truth, he wanted Dorian to leave him alone so he could sort out his feelings. But that hadn’t worked well for him before. So he doubted it would make a difference now. “You putting your feet against me made me realize: I was a monster. How could I have done that to my own mother?”

John could feel Dorian smile against his neck, placing his lips against the back of his neck and kissing him to his shoulder blades. “You’ll learn to deal with it,” Dorian said with certainty. Too much certainty for a android about to be reprogrammed. They laid in silence in the dark, John trying to drift off to sleep.

“Hey John?”

“Some of us actually need to sleep.”

“I’m yours.”

John grunted once, thankful the android couldn’t see his face from where he was. “Yeah. You are. Just try to remember that by the end of the week,” he mumbled into the pillow. But Dorian didn’t indicate whether he heard the man or not. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bit of a longer chapter. Next chapter will probably be pretty short, just to wrap things up. Thanks for reading and keeping up with this work! I really, really appreciate you guys and your feedback and ahhhhh. Y'all are great. Almost Boyfriends friends are the best friends to have.


	12. Chapter 12

John woke up alone that morning. And the next morning. And the morning after. He didn’t want to admit that he was counting days until he knew the results of Rudy’s work. He didn’t want to call the precinct and ask about the DRN. He didn’t want to beg or storm into the building. But he was only twiddling his thumbs now.  

He watched a lot of old movies. Old two-dimensional films that his grandfather used to love, mostly. He watched some recent movies too. He read a couple of short stories on his e-reader. He rifled through old case files. He thought about the Syndicate and Anna and anything and everything that ever passed through his head.

Anything to keep him from thinking about Dorian, really.

He flipped through the holo-screen, trying to find something interesting to watch. Turner Classic Movies was showing _Robo-cop._ God he loved that movie as a kid. Man and machine working together to fight crime, and man eventually having to overpower his own machinery, having to prove himself as human.

Now the very idea of the movie made him miserable. He changed the channel and hung his head backwards, staring at the ceiling. He loved him. He loved Dorian and he should have said it. But what would it have changed? What have those words ever meant?

He ignored his phone when it started ringing. It had been four days and no one had bothered to contact him until now. A vague part of him hoped it was Valerie, ready to end his loneliness and take his mind off of things. He thought about her smile and the way she said his name. He thought about how Dorian was so desperate to see the two of them together. It would be nice to go on a date with her. Maybe he’d take the leap and ask her out, when this is all over. Maybe it would help get Dorian out of his head.

The phone started ringing a second time, and he finally glanced down at the caller ID. Rudy Lom. Fuck. He fumbled to flip on the communication device and cleared his throat, “Yeah? Hello?” He rasped out, sounding a little more strained and desperate than he wanted to be.  

“Detec…John, yes,” Rudy said, sounding just as apprehensive as John felt. Kennex clenched his teeth and waited for the scientist to continue. “I’m afraid…well, I wanted to tell you, before you came back to work.”

“Spit it out Rudy. I don’t have all day.” They both knew that was a lie. John had all day and then some. But that didn’t change the fact that he needed to know what was going on.

“Rosenberg’s virus was…well it’s a bit fascinating, actually. An ingenious little thing. You see, it seems to corrupt and take over data gradually, consuming over time. So in fact while Dorian was attempting to sort out his memories, the virus was actively corrupting them more. A fully-adaptive virus system, it seems.” Rudy sounded far too excited about all of this. But underneath all that technobabble, John could still hear the worry in Rudy’s voice.

John rubbed his hands over his temples, trying to get his brain to stop racing, and get his heart slow down. “So you’re telling me that the virus sort of just…took over completely?” He was feeling sick to his stomach again. How much of the real Dorian was even left in him when they…

“Not completely, no. That most likely would have led to a full system crash. He is…or well, was, a ways off from that happening.”

“Was,” John repeated, anger rising to his chest. “What the hell do you mean _was_?” His voice nearly lowered to a growl. “Where is Dorian and what is his status? I’m done listening to your techno-talk, Rudy.” He tried to make himself sound calm. He tried to make sure that he wasn’t giving any piece of himself away. He knew Rudy wouldn’t pick up on it anyway, but he still shouldn’t lose his temper in front of the one man that could help him.

“He’s fine,” Rudy said softly. Too softly. John didn’t know what Rudy’s definition of “fine” was but from the way he sounded, John guessed it was a very loose definition. “I wasn’t able to sort out his memories manually. But I was able to pull a full reset to get the virus completely out. I’m not sure how much of his old memory he managed to retain.”

John’s blood went cold. He wanted to scream or shout or run out the door and towards the lab, injuries be damned. Instead, he just let the man on the other line continue.

“Dorian is different than an MX. Or any computer, for that matter. His hardware has been completely wiped of the memories saved in his systems. But it is possible that the Synthetic Soul programming managed to…”

“What do you mean ‘possible’? You haven’t tested it? So what? You’re just calling me to tell me bad news that might not even be a problem?” John gritted it out through his teeth. He could just picture it, Rudy going through and deleting away parts of Dorian like one would delete old pictures from a computer. And it drove him crazy. He knew Rudy would never deliberately change Dorian but…

“When he first went to sleep. Er…when I first laid him down for the operation,” Rudy finally said, the apology back in his voice. “He told me he would wait for you to wake him up. It didn’t seem right to do it myself.” Rudy cleared his throat. And even over the phone, John could tell that Rudy knew more about their relationship than he let on. “He’s waiting for you, Detective.”

Kennex stopped for a moment and stared into space, swallowing hard and feeling a pressure spreading in his chest. “Rudy I’m coming over. And I’m going to need you to _not_ tell anyone that I’m breaking into the precinct, understood?”

Rudy sounded pleased at this, humming a little. “Of course, Detective. Like a good agent, I would never tell a secret,” his voice sounded a little too cheerful and John could hear the grin in his voice. Kennex rolled his eyes and grabbed for his new synthetic leg, strapping it on with a heavy heart.

He grunted to himself and then sighed. “Well, time to go wake up Sleeping Beauty.”  

\---

Blood was rushing in ears as John pulled up towards the building and parked on the outer edge of the parking lot. He sat in the car for a few moments, reveling in how well and truly fucked he was. Here he was, a full-grown man with a lifetime of problems, having a panic attack over a _synthetic_.

But it was _his_ synthetic. And that’s all the motivation he needed.

He glanced at the necklace hanging from his rearview mirror, with the little silver pendant hanging from it. He flicked it once, looking at the little “A” on the front. He took it down and ran it through his hands. He was still staring at it as he got out of the car and began to walk towards the building. Hell, if Dorian really had been completely reset? Well, then maybe it was just a sign that he should just start over.

John took the necklace and tossed it into the trashcan outside of the precinct, leaving it behind as he walked through the front doors.

He ignored just about everyone who looked at him or tried to speak to him. He didn’t run into Valerie, which was a relief. He wasn’t sure what he would say to her. Richard glanced at him for only a second before opening his mouth to speak.

“Save it,” John grunted, high-tailing it through the facility. He didn’t want to deal with Detective Shortstack, even less than he usually did. He knew the man would alert the Captain that he was in the building during his healing probation. But John was certain that he didn’t care.

He just kept walking towards Rudy, with single-minded purpose.

\---

Rudy was waiting, rather nervously, when John entered the lab. Not a word was spoken between them, which, for Rudy, was more than a bit of an oddity. John moved to look at the DRN on the table. Eyes shut and in that same silver suit that he had first been awoken in. There was no difference between then and now, on the outside. But now, instead of annoyance, John felt nothing short of anxiousness and anticipation.

He looked like he was sleeping, just like on John’s charging table. John ran his fingers over Dorian’s face, moving towards the button below his ear. There were no lights tracking his movements, memorizing his touch. He wasn’t sleeping at all. He might as well have been dead.

“Should I…give you space?” Rudy asked uncertainly. John could see him fidgeting in the corner, but he barely looked up to pay him any mind.

“Yeah…” John first said softly, watching his hands over Dorian’s skin. Then, his mind finally registered the question and he looked up with a start. “Wait no. No. Just…stay here.” He didn’t want to sound like he was begging, so instead he sounded as if he was barking out an order, causing Rudy to startle a little before smoothing down his clothes and nodding. As much as John hated to admit it, he didn’t want to be alone.

“What if he doesn’t turn on?”

“Then I can probably kiss my job goodbye,” Rudy said with an uncertain laugh. But they both knew that was the last thing they wanted to happen.

John pressed his fingers to the button and held his breath, watching as Dorian opened his eyes, pupils shrinking and becoming alive. He only blinked for a second before turning over to look at the man who had awoken him. A small smile came onto his face as he looked the detective over. But it was an empty smile, the kind of smile he showed everyone. It wasn’t _his_ smile. It wasn’t the smile he had saved for John.

“Detective Kennex,” the DRN said with a bright grin as he moved his hand up for a handshake. “Your reputation precedes you.”

John felt something break inside of him. He told himself that it would be good to start over, to make things right this time around. But it seemed a lot worse now that it was actually happening. Instead, he only grunted and stared at Dorian, fresh-faced and new and already excited to be with his new partner. “Update your files. We have work to do.”

John made a heel-turn towards the door, not even glancing at Rudy. He looked back only once, to see Dorian sitting up from the table, a telling little smirk on his face. His eyes stayed on John, completely drilling into him before opening his mouth to speak.

“Of course. I’m all yours.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The moral of the story is "Dorian is a little shit". Anyway, thanks so much for reading! My tumblr is [pompouspickle](thepompouspickle.tumblr.com) if you guys ever want to hit me up for writing prompts or just to chat! I look forward to writing much more Jorian in the future! Y'all are the greatest.


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